With Blood Upon the Sand

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Her entire body shaking at Kameyl’s cold violence, Çeda studied the cleaved man. Had he been one of the lost tribe? Had he been some distant cousin? Did it matter either way? Regret replaced anger, and the thought of Emre falling to the stroke of a sword. Was that what awaited him? Surely it was what awaited many in the Host. This seemingly endless conflict between the Kings and the Al’afwa Khadar left her feeling small and insignificant, a child watching helplessly as a brawl played out in the streets. Yerinde’s grace, we’re better than this.

  After giving Çeda a disgusted look, Kameyl walked away. Melis began ordering the Silver Spears to take the prisoners. Yndris went with her, leaving Çeda alone with Sümeya.

  “He might have told us something,” Çeda said.

  Sümeya was wiping the blood from her blade on the turban cloth retrieved from a fallen enemy. She shrugged and said, “You’ll find, as I have, that Kameyl is gifted at drawing the truth from men such as these, and tonight she’ll have more incentive than ever.” With a fluid motion, she drove her sword home into its scabbard. “I’ve no doubt we’ll learn everything he might have been able to tell us.”

  “It’s wasteful,” Çeda said, “and heartless.”

  Sümeya laughed. “Heartless? You think these men have hearts? Two of your sisters are most likely dead because of these men.” She stepped forward and stabbed her finger toward the remains of the strange shambling creatures. “They had a hand in turning our scholars into those abominations. You? You still have your Emre, the only family you have—isn’t that what you told me?—so don’t speak to me of being heartless until you lose something you hold dear.”

  A vision of her mother swinging from the gallows swam before her. I have lost something I hold dear.

  “Now come,” Sümeya said to her Maidens, making for the tunnel down which Hamzakiir had fled. “Take the lanterns. We may yet catch him.”

  Melis and Yndris took up two lanterns and followed as Sümeya and Kameyl led the way. Çeda stopped near the asir, Kerim, who was staring at Mynolia’s remains. His hands reached out, not unlike a father for his child, a brother for his sister. It was an expression of deep pain for someone they dearly loved, or perhaps it was confusion over the cruelty of fate.

  “Come,” Kameyl barked, but Kerim did not move. “Come,” Kameyl said again.

  Could she truly not know that Çeda had taken Kerim’s reins? Go, Çeda said to him. There’s nothing to do for her now. Slowly, the asir turned toward Çeda, as if he hadn’t realized he was the one being spoken to. The look in his eyes broke Çeda’s heart. It was then, as she stared into the asir’s eyes, seeing this strange mix of sadness and a thirst for revenge, that Çeda remembered. The ships flying the flag of Ishmantep . . . they’d been preparing to leave. Çeda had set the Silver Spears to watch the ships, as Melis had bid her, but the Spears would stand no chance against Hamzakiir, not if he meant to escape Ishmantep.

  Kerim understood as well, or guessed it from Çeda’s thoughts. His body shook. The very notion of Hamzakiir escaping summoned a wail that began deep inside him. His rage found escape as he tilted his head back and howled to the darkened ceiling far above. And then he began loping toward the passageway Hamzakiir had used to escape.

  “Stop!” Kameyl called. And then a look of confusion passed over her. She focused her eyes on Çeda, and understanding dawned. She thrust a finger toward the asir’s retreating form. “Control it!”

  Çeda tried. She had no idea what the asir was going to do, but she didn’t want him running wild. Try as she might, though, she could do nothing to stop him.

  “Release him!” Kameyl shouted. She grabbed Çeda’s dress by the shoulder and shook her. “Do it now!”

  “I can’t!”

  The bond to Kerim—tenuous as they’d taken the stairs down to the tunnels—now felt as though it were braided through her being, a part of her. Perhaps it was the asir’s anger, or her own emotions, but just then asking her to release Kerim felt like to trying to forget her own name, to stop loving her mother. She couldn’t simply sever her bond.

  Çeda could feel him now, running through the darkened tunnel. But then she heard a rumbling, both through Kerim’s senses and—a split-second later—her own. Pain ran through her. Fear. A sound like the world was rending. And then her bond with Kerim vanished.

  The rumbling continued for some time. Dust coughed from the opening. They’d never make it back to the surface that way. “Quickly,” Çeda said to Sümeya, and ran in the opposite direction, back the way they’d come. “Şaban is Hamzakiir in disguise. Unless we hurry, he’s going to escape on Aziz’s ships.”

  After a moment, Sümeya followed, then the rest. Through the passageways they went, Çeda remembering the twisting turns they’d taken on the way here. Soon they came to the winding stairs. Ignoring the burn in her thighs, Çeda powered herself up to the caravanserai’s courtyard. She heard the sounds well before she reached open air. A roaring. A crackling. She gained the courtyard and saw smoke rising into the air on all four sides of the caravanserai. It billowed into the courtyard, scratched at her lungs, made her eyes water. The docks, she realized. The docks and the ships were on fire.

  She sprinted down the short tunnel leading to the docks and was greeted by a wall of fire. The pair of berths that had held Aziz’s ships, the cutter and the yacht, sat empty, but gods, the rest—the Javelin, the caravan ships, the piers, one corner of the caravanserai—were all aflame. Near the Javelin’s pier, beyond a wide swath of fire, a Silver Spear waved to her. “What is it?” Çeda shouted.

  He gestured wildly to the Javelin. “They’re in there!”

  A cold knife of fear slipped into Çeda’s heart. “Who’s in there?”

  “Some of the crew. Lord Aziz and the Spears who brought him belowdecks. And your friend, Emre.”

  No, no, no. “Why haven’t they left the ship?”

  “They can’t! The hold doors were locked moments after the fires began, and they held like iron. It was Şaban, Lord Aziz’s servant. I saw him, gods as my witness, fire flying from his open palms and striking the ships.”

  “And the ships you were told to guard?”

  He pointed over Çeda’s shoulder. “Three dozen men stormed the pier and slew the men we had assigned to watch Aziz’s cutter and yacht. They sailed away in moments.”

  Çeda heard his words, but could only stare at the fire raging across the deck of the Javelin. She could hear the screams of the men within. She might have heard Emre’s among them, but couldn’t be sure.

  Her attention was drawn to the men and women who’d formed a line from the well to one of the burning caravan ships. “Tell them to try to break out any way they can,” she said to the Spear, then somersaulted down to the sand. She was ready to run to the water brigade and order them to shift their attention to the Javelin, but stopped when she saw a skiff approaching. There was a woman with straight black hair and a purposeful look on her pretty face sitting at the front of the skiff. And in the back, a worried-looking young man.

  “By the gods,” Çeda said. “Davud?”

  Chapter 52

  “DAVUD!”

  Anila’s voice was worried. He woke from a fitful slumber and sat up, looking back for the Burning Sand.

  “No. Ahead.” She pointed several points off the starboard bow.

  He saw it then—a ship, large but not like the massive trade ships. He fumbled for the small spyglass they’d found in the skiff’s supplies, lifted it, and studied the ship. It looked like a cutter. Large lateen sails gave it a look like a knife cutting through the sand. Its runners were long and sleek.

  “That’s a royal cutter,” said Davud. “With the pennant of Sharakhai!”

  She took the spyglass from him and looked while holding the tiller. “They’re heading for Ishmantep. Maybe they know?”

  “Or if not we could warn them! We may save them yet, Anila!�
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  Davud stood and waved. They both did. They shouted at the top of their lungs. Sound traveled uncannily well over the desert, but surely the ship’s skis were making too much sound for them to be heard. And as distant as they were from the cutter, there was only a small chance someone on the ship had spotted them. Even if they had, they wouldn’t bother with some skiff out in the desert, especially if they were off to do the Kings’ will in Ishmantep.

  “We need to go faster,” Anila said.

  Davud shrugged. “There’s nothing left to do. We’ve jettisoned all we can.”

  “You could summon the wind again.”

  “I’ll not risk it for this.”

  “You must! We need to warn them. We need to help!”

  “And we will, as soon as we get there. We’ll sail as quickly as we can.”

  Anila’s face turned to stone. “You may be consigning them to death.”

  Davud motioned to the tiller. “Let me take a turn. You’ve been up all night.”

  She took a deep breath, held it, then released it in a huff and moved to where Davud had been sleeping. She lay down and fell asleep without another word.

  He sailed onward, the cutter slowly but surely pulling away from them. Eventually it was lost altogether, and he wondered if he had consigned them to death. It can’t be helped. Blood magic isn’t to be used frivolously.

  As the sun rose, he practiced the sigils in his mind. Fire. Water. Earth. Air. Command. Subsume. Exude. Destroy. He drew them over and over again, fixing them there, wondering what it was about blood that allowed them to take form. Why couldn’t he do it without blood? Why couldn’t Hamzakiir? The blood of the elder gods, Hamzakiir had said. There was power in it, but if that was so, and if it was true the first gods withheld their blood from Tulathan, Goezhen, and all the rest, then how was it they could perform the miracles they did?

  Davud ate sparingly, but drank perhaps more than he should have. The working of magic had left him with a thirst he wasn’t accustomed to. Indeed, after drinking, and still wanting more, he wondered if it was a thirst that would ever leave him.

  “What did it feel like?” Anila asked.

  He swung his gaze down to look at her. She looked almost peaceful, lying in the bottom of the boat. “What, calling the wind?”

  She made a face. “No, pissing in the sand.”

  He tried to laugh, but all that came out was a sound a sick dog might make. “It feels as if we were very fortunate. It feels as if we could easily have died. Desperation drove me, or I might not have done it, but the experience could just as easily have torn me to pieces. Or you.”

  “But it didn’t.”

  “You’re treating it like some mundane implement, a scalpel to excise a cancer, a spear to be thrown against your enemies.”

  “It is. A mighty spear that many would kill to possess.”

  Gods, the way her eyes lit up when she spoke those words. You would kill for it, he thought, that much is plain. But Davud would do almost anything to give the power up. It gnawed at him even now, worse than at any time since leaving Ishmantep. “Anila, this power is nothing to trifle with. It is a desert asp. A barbed whip. A thing that would cut you as easily as your enemies.”

  Anila sat up and raised her hands to the sky and shook them in frustration. “But you did it! You mastered a spell!” Davud opened his mouth to speak, but she talked over him. “I’m no fool. I know it’s not to be taken lightly. But whether the gods have shined upon you or cursed you, it is a power you now hold.” She lowered her hands until they were fists shivering in her lap. He wasn’t even sure she was aware of it. “We have enemies now. We have vengeance to deliver upon them. How better to do so than to use the very thing he’s used against them, against us?”

  “I’m no match for Hamzakiir.”

  “I’m not suggesting you stand against him directly. For now, we should take from him what he needs most, so that he is weakened, so that his other enemies may have him.”

  “Your thirst for blood is unbecoming, Anila.”

  “Your lack of nerve is unbecoming.”

  Her words stung, but also showed him Anila’s nature. Bloodthirsty. Unwilling to search for peace. Again the vision of Tayyar, his skull caved in, superimposed over Anila’s face. Whatever did I see in you? He was just about to tell her that he’d not allow himself to become a pawn in her thirst for revenge when he noticed something dark along the horizon ahead. Smoke, he realized. A thick column of it. Which could mean nothing good.

  Anila followed his gaze. “Ishmantep,” she breathed.

  Indeed, as the smoke was drawn like a skein of wool higher into the blue sky, the walls of Ishmantep were revealed. The smoke issued forth in a steady stream from its center—the caravanserai itself, Davud judged.

  “What’s happened?” he breathed.

  “We have to hurry,” Anila said while holding out her arm, the same one Davud had pierced with the tip of his knife.

  “Anila, I don’t think that’s a very good—”

  “Hurry!” She shook her arm at him, pulling the sleeve higher. “They’re all still there, waiting for us to save them.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do.”

  The column of black smoke widened. The fire was spreading. What might have happened, Davud had no idea, but Anila may be right. At the very least, they could arrive in time to rescue some of them. “We don’t even know where they are.”

  “We’ll find them, Davud.”

  She looked so fraught, so very hopeless, it approached comedy. Davud was conscious enough of his own emotions to recognize how dangerous it was to make decisions based on desperation, but he also knew he would regret it to his dying day if he didn’t try everything he could to save his friends. As he pulled out his knife, Anila half smiled, half grimaced.

  He pressed the knife into her arm and used the blood to draw a sigil on the palm of his right hand—the same one he’d used against the Burning Sand. He then drew it on his left palm as well. As he filled his mind with it, the desert came alive. He felt the wind whipping over the dunes, felt it whorl above him, felt it rush in a strong westward flow near the thin white clouds above.

  He inserted himself into the wind that blew over the skiff, entered it like one might wade into a stream. It was so easy to feel it pass around him, to cup it in his hands, to form the currents anew. He almost laughed at the change, how difficult it had been with the Burning Sand, how easy it was now.

  “Yes,” Anila said. “Yes.”

  He spared one glance for her where she sat at the tiller. The wonder in her eyes . . . It made him uncomfortable, made him overly conscious of the flow he was now a part of.

  Their skiff flew over the desert, coming closer and closer to Ishmantep. The smoke continued to thicken. It billowed like a pitch fire, writhing and angry and alive. He could hear bells ringing, cries of alarm, men and women shouting. They passed through the serai’s gates, and all too soon the scale of the fire was revealed. The docks surrounding the caravanserai were aflame, as were the ships.

  A line of men and women were hauling buckets from a well and trying to douse the flames along one of the distant piers. Another group of what looked to be a ship’s crew was hauling an ancient caravel free from its place at dock, but the ship itself was fully aflame, fire licking along half the foredeck and creeping up the foremast’s sails and rigging.

  Along the dock, near what looked to be a Royal Sharakhani cutter, were a lone Silver Spear and a Blade Maiden wearing their typical black dress, turban, and veil. The Maiden dropped down to the sand in a head-over-heels leap, landing lightly and sprinting full tilt, but she skidded to a stop when she noticed their approaching skiff.

  “By the gods,” she said, staring at him. “Davud?”

  He recognized her voice. “Çeda?”

  As Anila dropped the sail
and Davud snapped the rudder to one side to stop the skiff, Çeda removed the black veil covering her face and met them.

  “What’s happened?” Davud asked as he stepped out of the skiff.

  “Just stay here.”

  She made to leave, but Davud rushed in front of her. “What’s happened, Çeda? I can help.”

  She waved to the royal cutter. “Emre’s in that ship. I have to get that water line moving.” As she ran off, a Silver Spear in a dingy white uniform climbed down from the dock and headed for the cutter. Another Blade Maiden, a tall woman with what looked to be burn marks and holes in her black dress, followed. Both bore axes, which they used to hack against the hull, presumably to force their way in through the side of the ship. As powerfully as the Silver Spear was swinging his axe, the Blade Maiden matched him blow for blow. She hacked at the hull as if a newborn child lay dying within. But this was no mere caravan ship. It was a royal cutter, made of sterner stuff than a cargo ship. They’d not be getting in through the hull any time soon.

  As three more Maidens dropped down to the sand, Anila tugged at Davud’s sleeve and pointed to a stone archway that would lead them toward the interior of the caravanserai. “Come,” she said.

  Davud motioned to the ship. “We can’t just leave them.”

  “We have our own friends to save!”

  “You were in the forum the day of the attack.” This came from one of the Blade Maidens, a warden by the insignia on the sleeve of her dress.

  “We were,” they said, bowing their heads in unison.

  As she glanced at their skiff, a look of confusion came and went. There was a distinct note of sadness, or perhaps regret, as she said, “I’ve no idea how you escaped the fate of your fellow scholars, but you won’t find them in there.”

  “What do you mean?” Anila asked.