“What is this place?” Çeda asked.
But the asir ignored her. It held her wrist as if it feared she might run away. As if she could ever find her way back to the surface on her own. She would die before she found her way out again.
The tunnel ended in yet another cavern, and it made Çeda gasp. It was huge, the size of a cathedral, and shaped like a gemstone, narrow at the bottom where she and the asir stood, widening as it reached into the darkness. More roots entered this place through the cavern walls, making her wonder just how deep they ran. She might hack at them with a sword and find them ten feet deep. Twenty. Perhaps they reached to the darkest places of the earth where demons were said to dwell.
In the center of the space was a thing Çeda had to stare at to understand. From the ceiling came a clutch of roots that ended ten feet from the floor. The thick braid became thinner and thinner as it dropped from the darkened heights of this place, until all that was left was a thin strand. Along this length came moisture—water, Çeda supposed—dripping down onto a rock of sorts. The rock was translucent, like imperfect glass, and glowed from within with a brilliant violet light that after the darkness was almost too bright to look upon.
“What is it?” Çeda asked, squinting at it.
The asir ignored her. It released her hand and walked beyond the glowing stone. Çeda stepped to one side and saw there was another asir there, lying among the bed of roots. The asir that had led her here crept closer, caring and careful in the same breath, as though it wanted to help but regretted doing so in the past. The asir whispered—a wight in the night—while the other creature, longer, more frail, lifted its head, listening perhaps. It took some time, but it trained its eyes on Çeda, stared at her with rheumy eyes, the violet light casting its blackened skin the sickly purple of rotted eggplant. They remained this way for a time, the one asir whispering, the other looking Çeda over with an anger that Çeda guessed was only one small glimpse into a fount of hatred.
“Sehid-Alaz,” Çeda said, for surely this was him, “I’ve been brought here by my mother, Ahyanesh Allad’ava, and the desert witch, Saliah Riverborn, to speak with you.” Her throat caught. She swallowed before speaking again. “I was told you would know why.”
The first, the one that had brought Çeda here, did something that shocked Çeda. She—Çeda could see her form better now and was certain she had once been a woman—reached out and touched Sehid-Alaz’s cheek. For the first time, Çeda understood her words. “Blood of our blood.”
It lessened neither the anger nor the despair that shone brightly in his eyes. If anything, it seemed to make them worse. The other asir spoke faster now. Sehid-Alaz’s lips pulled back to reveal a sawtooth line of broken teeth. He struggled to pull himself up off the floor. He rolled, made his way slowly to his knees, then to his feet. He shuffled toward her with an unsteady gait, arms spread wide, head jutting forward as if he’d scented his next meal. He loped toward her. Then ran.
A bubbling terror rose up inside Çeda. She backed away, ready to turn and run, just as the other asir tackled him. The two of them scuffled over the ground. But Sehid-Alaz was undeniable, or the other was unwilling to fight. In the end, it amounted to the same thing. He tore at her skin with his claws. He lifted her and slammed her against the glowing stone. Over and over he struck her until black blood oozed from the back of her skull.
He allowed her to slip to the ground, unconscious or dead, then swung his gaze to Çeda, who turned and sprinted away as quickly as she could. With the petal driving her, she moved like a gazelle, and still she heard the huff of his breath coming closer and closer. She’d hardly made it beyond the mouth of the tunnel when he barreled into her.
They both fell onto the lattice of roots. He rolled her over roughly. His eyes pierced her. His nostrils flared as he leaned down and smelled her neck, her hair. He took her hand and licked the blood from a shallow cut she’d received when they’d fallen. “Lies!” he wheezed. “Liiiieeeessss! Through her veins runs the blood of Kings! The blood of Kings!”
“No!” she screamed back. “I am the daughter of Ahyanesh Allad’ava! I was given petals!” She ripped the small leather bag free from her belt and shook it beneath his nose. “Who but us would defy the Kings so?” Çeda didn’t understand everything her mother did, but she knew enough to know that their defiance would mean death were the Kings to find out. She hoped Sehid-Alaz would understand and give up his terrible notion. The blood of Kings!
Sehid-Alaz reared back, his craggy face filled with surprise. He snatched the bag from her, brought it to his nose, and breathed deeply. He did so again, his hollow stomach hollowing even further. Then a third time. He swallowed, his chin quivering, and angled himself up on sticklike limbs to turn back toward the cavern. He walked back to the stone and the lifeless form of the asir who lay there, that creature who had once been a woman, then fell to his knees and picked up her hand. He stroked it with all the care a husband would show his wife. Bowing over his folded legs, still holding her hand, he cried. He pulled her to him and held her, and released an anguished lament that felt much larger than this place could hold, as though it would soon burst these cavern walls and shatter the desert sky.
Sehid-Alaz cried for a long while. So did Çeda. She was terrified of Sehid-Alaz, but she felt sorry for him as well, and the other asir he’d killed. When her tears ran dry at last, she approached him slowly. She kneeled and touched his shoulder, then ran her hand down his back. “She was loved,” Çeda said softly, “and now she is free.”
It was something she’d heard her mother say to Demal’s younger sister at Hefhi’s funeral. Hefhi had lain in a skiff, wrapped in white, ready to be given back to the desert. “He was loved,” Ahya had said to her as Hefhi’s skiff had sailed away, “and now he is free.”
Sehid-Alaz lifted himself, his joints cracking. “Freeee.”
“Yes.”
“I will be free.”
Çeda could hear the yearning in his voice, the deep desire. “One day, yes.”
He kissed the dead asir on the forehead, then stood and took Çeda’s hand. Without another word, he led her from the cavern and back the way they’d come. How he knew where to go, Çeda had no idea, but there was no hesitation when they came to splits in the tunnels. It took a long time, but eventually they came to a place of darkness. Roots wrapped around her, pulled her up and brought her into the light of dawn. She was among the adichara once more, but alone. Sehid-Alaz had not followed.
“Memma?” She wandered among them, looking for an exit. “Saliah Riverborn?” She came to the desert soon after.
Her mother was already running toward her. She swept Çeda up into her arms and hugged her close. “My sweet child, my sweet child, I’m so sorry. I should never have brought you here.”
“You made no mistake bringing her here,” said Saliah behind her. She strode toward them, her staff thumping against the sand. “We could not lose him to despair or madness.”
Ahya said nothing in return, only held Çeda close as they returned to the skiff. She told them what had happened, and neither said a word. Neither, in fact, seemed surprised by much of it. Her mother, at least, paled when Çeda told her of the way Sehid-Alaz had killed the other asir, and how he’d attacked Çeda. “He said I was the blood of Kings, memma. Why would he think that?”
Ahya, sitting at the tiller, stared at Çeda in silence. She swallowed as the wind tugged at her tail of black hair, then looked to Saliah at the head of the skiff. “She cannot know. It’s too soon.”
Saliah, her eyes fixed stone-like on the horizon behind them, reached out and touched Çeda’s shoulder. “You’re sure?”
Ahya nodded.
“Very well,” Saliah said as she stroked Çeda’s hair. “Do you like to sail, child?”
Çeda shrugged, not understanding why she would ask. “I do.”
“Do you sail often?”
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��No,” Çeda said, “but I have a zilij that I found. I skim over the sand with it.”
“Tell me about it.”
The sun was rising in the east, driving away the remains of the night. As the desert awakened and Çeda told her tale, Saliah continued to brush her hair, and the memories of her horrific night faded, lost like spindrift in the endless sands of the Great Shangazi.
Chapter 56
ÇEDA BLINKED. ABOVE HER, stars peered through the gauze of the desert night. Emre knelt by her side, holding her hand. He gave her a nervous smile as she rolled her head toward him. He reached out and wiped the tears from her eyes. “Why do you cry?” he asked.
“My mother.” How could she explain it? “I saw her. She hid much from me.”
A brief pause. “And you’re surprised?”
“This is different. Saliah was there. She robbed me of my memories at my mother’s request.”
Emre stared at her, confused. She told him the story. All of it. From Hefhi’s death to Demal’s hanging to seeing Leorah in the desert to her trip with her mother and Saliah. And then the journey beneath the sand, through the tunnels. Sehid-Alaz in his madness. “Where is he?” She looked around suddenly, worried that he’d gone.
“There.” Emre pointed along the trough between the dunes.
She walked that way, Emre trailing behind her, and found Sehid-Alaz waiting around a bend. The ancient King of the Thirteenth Tribe . . . He looked so very small, even smaller than when she’d found him in that strange cavern. She knelt before him, silent, unsure what to say.
She took his hands and held them. His blackened skin felt smooth, dry, slick as sun-dried leather. After a time, he lifted his head and spoke in a rasp, “You saved me that day.”
“I don’t understand how.”
“Our lives. Our existence.” He stared at his hands in wonder, as if he still couldn’t understand how all this had come to be. “How it wears on the soul. Forbidden are we from taking our own lives, or the lives of our brothers and sisters. And yet in my madness I nearly took my own. And I ended the lives of two I had sworn to protect.” He drew a long, dry breath and looked Çeda in the eyes. “You pulled me back from the abyss. Made me remember what I had yet to do. What we all must do. The false lords of Sharakhai were pleased with how far I’d fallen, but they would soon have come and ended my life had you not brought me back from the edge of the abyss.”
Çeda shivered, remembering the scene in the courtyard of Eventide, how Mesut had drawn a soul from his black gemstone—Havva’s soul—and used it to chain her to another form. “You might have been given to another, remade to better serve him.”
“It isn’t enough for them to chain the soul anew. They force the old to consume the young.”
The horror from that night was now mixing with rage at what Mesut and Cahil were doing and sorrow for the lives of those they required for such a foul sacrifice. “Why would Nalamae have made me forget you?”
“She was not Nalamae. Not then. She was still Saliah. And she knew too little. She had to tread with the greatest care, as is still true, which is why she could not come this night.”
“She knows you’ve come?”
“She sent me. She knows of the coming conflict, but fears the attention of her sisters and brothers, who are as yet unaware of her new incarnation. She sends with me a message.” He used his finger to draw in the sand, and when he was done, Rhia’s light lit the angles of the old sign for king. The head of a jackal was drawn next to it. It was Mesut, the Jackal King, though he clearly didn’t wish her to speak the name, or didn’t trust himself to do so.
“What of him?” Çeda asked.
“You wish to invoke his bloody verse.” His eyes took in both her and Emre. He’d heard them speaking, then, or had felt it in her heart.
“I do,” she replied.
“Do not. The goddess and I beseech you.”
For a moment, Çeda couldn’t speak. “But . . . How could you ask me to stay my hand against him?”
“His gift from she of silver skin, his golden band . . . He has taken many souls in the years since Beht Ihman. All reside within that gem. It is an affront that echoes that terrible night. It is why I have sent others to take it from him. I have tried my best to prepare them, yet all have failed. Slaughtered for their treachery.”
Çeda’s mind was drawn to the room below the collegia tower where she and Amalos had sat, reading stories scratched into the bones of black laughers. “I read of one. A woman from Tribe Narazid.”
Sehid-Alaz nodded slowly. “Her name was Esmiya, and it was I who sent her.”
“How many others have tried?”
“Four. And all have perished, for they could not master the device the desert gods bestowed upon the King. The last was sniffed out by the King himself, and soon he had tied the deed to me. It was why he tortured me so before you found me as a child. It was the reason I was driven to near madness. So you see, I cannot risk you in such a way. I beseech you, leave him. Choose another.”
“He will be allowed to live, then?”
“Never,” he said sharply. “We only need more time.”
Emre glanced nervously toward the ship. “Do you have more of the verses?”
Çeda nodded. “I have Beşir’s, and he may be a good target, but I wonder if he will even be called to the harbor. He was not made for battle. The same can be said of Ihsan, Yusam, perhaps Zeheb as well. But Cahil . . . He will likely be called upon. He wouldn’t miss it in any case. His thirst for blood is too great. And unlike the other Kings, he may be foolish enough to wade into battle without the protection of the Maidens by his side.”
Sehid-Alaz’s emaciated hand touched Çeda’s. “Take care that your hatred for his daughter does not cloud your judgment.”
“Yndris?” Emre asked.
Çeda nodded. “I will shed no tears for Yndris’s loss,” she said to Sehid-Alaz, “but neither will I let it affect me. I will make for Beşir if he is there, Cahil if not.”
As she spoke, Sehid-Alaz squeezed her fingers, then stood and looked beyond her. Çeda could hear someone trudging over the sand. “I was never able to thank you,” came the whisper of his voice. Before her eyes, his hands began to dissipate, to fall away like sand. Indeed, he was sand. More and more of him fell, until the last was caught in a gust and Çeda felt something very like a kiss being placed upon her forehead.
With the footsteps nearly upon them, Çeda shoved Emre back onto the sand and lay on top of him. She slipped her hand around the back of his head, grabbed a fistful of hair, and drew him in for a deep kiss, a thing he immediately returned. For a few moments, their hands roamed—an act, only an act, but how it warmed her to feel his lips once more. And how fully he seemed to invest in this play staged for an audience of one.
“We leave early,” came Sümeya’s voice. She waited for Çeda to lift herself off of Emre. Çeda couldn’t see her face well enough to read her, but her stance was stiff. “Return to the ship. Now.” There was no question she’d meant that for Emre. He stood and bowed to them both, then left, trudging back toward the sandship. When the sound of his footsteps faded, Sümeya said, “We’ll be returning to Sharakhai soon.”
“Of course, First Warden.”
“What happened before we reached Ishmantep. You and Yndris. You and I . . .” Sümeya was so rarely at a loss for words, but here she was, stumbling through this speech. Çeda wondered how long she’d thought about it before coming here. “There will be much to do, for you, for us. Hamzakiir and the Host are no threats to take lightly. Perhaps it would be best if I transfer you to another hand.”
Çeda had had few enough lovers, and no relationship that had lasted any length of time beyond Osman, but she still recognized the note of loneliness in Sümeya’s voice. The hope. She wanted Çeda to deny her. She wanted Çeda to fight to remain in her hand. But staying, if that was what Sümey
a wanted it, would be a mistake. The time had come for Çeda to distance herself from Sümeya, and she was providing the perfect opportunity.
“Perhaps that would be best,” Çeda finally replied.
Sümeya nodded once. “Very well,” she said shortly, then turned and walked away, leaving a coldness in her wake—a coldness, Çeda was surprised to find, she very much regretted.
They reached Sharakhai seven days after leaving Ishmantep, a full twenty-one days since leaving the Amber City. As they were heading into the eastern harbor, clouds gathered, and a cool rain began to fall as they slid toward the dock. The heavy sand fouled the runners, making them crawl toward the berth the flagman was waving them toward. When they departed, the sun broke through, making the rain glow like drops of citrine against a field of sodden ash.
Emre remained on the ship. All had agreed, including Emre, that it would be best he not be seen. When night fell, he would be let out through the southern gates of Tauriyat with the understanding that he would return with news if he was able. Sümeya and Çeda and the rest of their hand were walking along the dock when Çeda saw Davud walking solemnly behind Anila, who was being carried on a stretcher toward the quay and a wagon that would take her to the House of Maidens, where she would be examined by the Matrons. The poor girl was wrapped from head to toe in bandages, to which had been applied a salve they hoped would help her frostbitten skin. They’d also given her the last of the black lotus stored on the ship. It was meant to help with severe pain, and who on the ship was in more pain than she?
“Davud?” Çeda called as rain pattered against her black veil and dress. He turned to her woodenly, as if his mind were with Anila and only Anila. “What will you do now?” she asked him.
Behind him, Anila moaned as she was lifted onto the wagon bed. He motioned absently, eyes distant and numb, full of regret. “I will see what can be done.”
“The Matrons can work wonders, Davud. You’ll see. But I meant you. What will you do?” They both knew she was talking about his newfound abilities.
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