“Hamzakiir told me to find someone in Sharakhai who can help me control it.”
“And will you?”
He shrugged. “The Kings may never let me leave Tauriyat, Çeda. They may kill me rather than let me live in their city.” He shrugged again. “The wind blows as it will.” Without another word he walked away.
“Davud,” she called, but he ignored her and hopped up onto the bed of the cart. As the cart rolled away, he watched Anila.
High atop Tauriyat, in the lush garden of King Yusam’s palace, Çeda stood by Sümeya’s side as she told Yusam all that had happened since they’d sailed for Ishmantep. Ferns filled the space. Bowed trees masked the sky. A burbling spring fed Yusam’s mere.
This was the very same place where Çeda had first met King Yusam, where he’d seen a violent vision in his depthless pool. Çeda had been fearful he’d kill her then and there and be done with her, but shortly after he’d said that not only would she be accepted into the Blade Maidens, but that Sümeya would take her into her own hand. Sümeya had come to the point where they’d discovered the grotesquely transformed collegia scholars. She was telling him how monstrous it had been to fight them, and it had been, certainly, but all Çeda could think about were the horrors the scholars had lived through, not just the ones who’d died in the temple, but those who still lived.
“Were they young or old?” Yusam asked.
“My Lord King?”
“On the day of the abduction, three scholars were counted among the missing. You may have had chance to know them. Süleiman, Taram, and Farid. Learned scholars all. Might any of the three unfortunate souls you saw in Ishmantep have been one of them?”
“How old were they?” Sümeya asked.
“I don’t know precisely, but none were young. All three have surely seen fifty summers.”
Sümeya shook her head. “As much as they’d changed, it’s difficult to say, but no, I don’t believe so.”
“And you?” he asked Çeda.
“I agree,” Çeda replied. “They both had the look of the young about them.”
Yusam nodded to Sümeya. “Go on.”
Sümeya did, finishing with the fires Hamzakiir had set, how Davud and Anila had saved the burning ship, and Anila’s strange, ice-cold burning through Davud’s clumsy use of blood magic. She went on to tell him of the repairs to the Javelin and their subsequent voyage to Sharakhai, but at that point Yusam seemed to lose interest. He paced along the balcony, arms crossed as he stroked his chin. His eyes were dark as his gaze flitted to and fro. No doubt he was comparing their story to his visions, trying to piece them together so that he could decide what to do.
It was a common enough look for the Jade-eyed King, but there was something different about him today, something Çeda had never seen in him, at least not to this degree. He was worried, she realized. Confused. He kept glancing at his mere, only paces away, as if he wished to go to it and see the future he and his fellow Kings were rushing toward. “First Warden, you may leave.”
Sümeya glanced to Çeda, but then clasped her hands over her heart and bowed. “Excellence.”
When her bootsteps had faded, Yusam motioned to the mere. “Do you recall my reaction when the two of us were last here?” He raised his hand. “Don’t answer that. I imagine it would be hard to forget. Hardly a day has passed that I haven’t considered that vision. All that I have done since has been in an attempt to avoid it.”
“What was it, my King?”
“I saw the gods standing upon Tauriyat,” he finally said. “A storm unlike the desert has ever seen troubled the sky. Goezhen raged, for what reason I cannot guess, but Tulathan stood next to him, trying to calm him. The other desert gods stood behind them. Thaash, Rhia, Yerinde, and Bakhi. Only Nalamae was absent. And Sharakhai itself was gone. Razed to the ground.” He paced toward the mere, motioning for Çeda to follow. “It was not merely that image that made me rage so. I felt what it was like at that time. Whatever had happened, the gods themselves could barely withstand it. Something was threatening to tear them apart. To tear the world apart.” He stopped and stared down into the depths of the black water. “Since then I’ve paid careful attention to my visions. Like a scent on the wind, I can tell which visions are connected to it. I can sift through them to find their common thread. They give me direction. Movement. And from there I can see where it will take us.”
“The captain’s journal. Finding King Aldouan’s body in the desert.”
Yusam nodded. “And you standing before a burning ship. They’re leading somewhere, Çedamihn. The question is, where?”
Yusam’s mere, and the notion that, no matter how careful she and others were, they could be unmasked with a glimpse from a dream while staring into that dark water, had always unnerved Çeda, but now the feeling had become so acute she felt her skin prickling with fear.
“Hamzakiir’s plans?” she offered. “The attack on the aqueduct?”
“That”—Yusam shrugged—“is but one thread in the web, and not even the largest. There are many that are more important. The things we do now may lead to the death of Sharakhai. Perhaps the whole of the Shangazi.”
“Surely you’ll see the way.”
At this Yusam laughed. “You disappoint me, Çedamihn. You speak like a storyteller in the west end, recounting tales of the mere and how it grants me anything I seek. So many, even some of the Kings, think there is nothing for me to do but act upon the visions once seen. But you should know better. There are shadows ahead. There is danger.” He motioned to the mere. “Did you know that once I saw you here, looking into the depths of the mere?”
Çeda shook her head. Her heart was pounding, though she knew not why.
“You were caught in a vision, rapt. I wonder if that day was today.”
Çeda could only stare, horrified, at the mere. She didn’t wish to see her future. She was too afraid of what she would see. Too afraid of her own failure.
Yusam considered her, took in her garb, her desert boots, her black Maiden’s dress, her turban. Then he stared deeply into her eyes, as if he’d found a second mere that might share more secrets with him. “No. Perhaps it wasn’t.” He motioned her back toward the palace. “Come, I’ve kept you here for a greater purpose.”
They walked, and Çeda began to feel an itch at the nape of her neck. There was something different about Yusam, an intensity she hadn’t seen in a long while. They entered the palace, where Yusam led them to a doorway with a winding set of stairs leading down. A servant was there, ready with a lantern that he passed to Yusam as he and Çeda entered the stairwell. Down they went, Yusam leading the way.
“Two days before your return,” he said, “I happened upon a vision of a collegia master. Not the three we spoke of earlier, but another. In it, he was reading a story inscribed in copper leaf, as they do in the north.”
At this, the itch along Çeda’s neck crawled down her spine and slipped inside her chest. It felt like a cold hand reaching for her heart. Please, Nalamae. Please not Amalos. They came to a landing that revealed a hallway that ran straight as an arrow. At the far end, two Silver Spears stood guard on the opposite sides of an archway that beckoned like a reek dealer in a west end alley.
“I knew not its nature at the time,” Yusam continued, his lantern throwing wild shadows over the amber stone as they marched in step, “but it seemed innocent enough, so I sent few Spears to investigate. With the groundskeeper’s help, they searched the collegia for the room I’d seen in the vision. Small. No windows. A lone desk with several chairs and a simple set of shelves. More importantly, it housed a wealth of texts.”
Yusam was so bloody calm, but Çeda was sure this was part of his test. Remain calm. Breathe. Give nothing away. “Not surprising, for a scholar to have texts piled on his desk?”
“No, but these were ancient texts, one and all. It smacked of a man looking into Sha
rakhai’s past.”
The implication was clear: it was not expressly forbidden by the Kannan, but all knew it was forbidden to look too closely into the origins of the Kings, and of Beht Ihman in particular.
They were nearing the archway now. The Spears bowed their heads, and Yusam and Çeda entered a room that was wide and long and made entirely of pristine white marble, including the four raised slabs situated in a square pattern at the center of the room. Three of the slabs were unoccupied. The fourth, however, held the naked body of an aged man with what looked to be three knife wounds in his stomach and another between his ribs.
Çeda had known the identity of this man from the moment Yusam had mentioned a collegia master.
Amalos.
The body was impeccably clean, as if Yusam had insisted his blood be drained lest it stain the white marble. He looked not peaceful, nor in pain, but instead slack, lifeless, as if he’d turned his back on this life in the moment of his death. When they came near, Çeda realized a patina-green leaf of beaten copper rested between his ankles. It had been hidden from their vantage near the archway, but now it filled her vision. There was writing on it. A record of some sort. Why would it have been brought here? Yusam, of all the Kings, wouldn’t have done so without it having some great meaning.
Çeda composed herself before speaking, the shock of Amalos’s death allowing her some distance from the feelings that would strike her when she was safely away from Yusam’s palace. “What did the Spears find, my Lord King?”
Yusam moved to the opposite side of the slab, then set the lantern down. “His name is Master Amalos. They found him reading, exactly as I’d seen him.” He picked up the copper leaf with the tiny words scratched onto its surface. “He’d been reading this. I thought it the key to a riddle, for it was bright, nearly blinding, in the vision I’d seen.” Yusam held it above the lantern and began reading. “But now I’m not so sure, for I can’t fathom how it relates to any of the other threads I’ve been tugging at.
Çeda desperately wished she could read it as well, but the angle of the light was to his benefit, not hers, so instead she read him. He stared, rapt, as if by reading it this one last time he could unlock its secrets. He didn’t know, then. He hadn’t learned what Amalos had been after, nor had he learned about Çeda’s involvement. Or Zaïde’s. But if he didn’t know, how had Amalos died?
“Did they kill him out of hand?”
“Hmm?” Yusam looked up, his gaze momentarily lost.
“Did the Spears kill him?”
Yusam forced himself back to the present and stared at her soberly. “No. According to those men, our good master threw down a packet of some sort. It burst, filling the room with light and pounding their ears with sound. It stunned them, and by the time they had recovered sufficiently to give chase, Amalos had fled. They lost him in the tunnels, but found him hours later, not a hundred paces from the tunnel’s entrance, bleeding from these wounds.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do we.”
“He was murdered, but by whom?”
“Precisely, Çedamihn. Precisely.”
Çeda thought for a moment he meant to indict her in some way, but she soon realized that wasn’t it at all. However improbably, Yusam had come to trust her. Or rather, trust his mere, which of late had seen fit to show him visions that involved her. More than once he’d called her his divining rod, which had always made her supremely uncomfortable. Now, though, she realized she could use it to her advantage.
Though her instincts to always be careful around the Kings begged her not to, she held one hand out for the copper leaf. “May I see it, my Lord King?”
The bluntness of her question snapped him from his reverie. He looked down at the leaf, at her hand, and then an unreadable expression—hope?—crossed his face as he handed it to her.
She pulled the lantern nearer and read quickly lest Yusam change his mind. In the old script it told the tale of a woman who’d saved her family from a sand drake by offering herself to it. She’d walked, arms spread, toward the great beast. The drake had swayed this way, then that, aggressive in its movements at first. But as the mother came toward it, it quietened and lowered its head. The beast lay on the sand as she stroked the scales along its head. Then in a sudden flurry the drake lifted and drove beneath the surface, its wake furrowing the sand until it was gone altogether.
Why Amalos would have been reading it, and, more importantly, why the mere would have given it such prominence in Yusam’s vision, Çeda had no idea. She handed the leaf back and shook her head, unsure what to say.
“There’s one more piece of the vision I’ve withheld.” Something dark scuttled inside Çeda’s heart, but Yusam went on, “A white cowl pulled over a woman’s head. The flash of a knife in the darkness. A dress stained red.”
Çeda’s mouth went dry. A Matron. A Matron had killed Amalos. By the gods who breathe, Zaïde had killed him. The moment the thought came, Çeda was certain it was true. It would have been all too natural for Amalos to go to her for aid. He would have confessed what had happened. Amalos hadn’t known her as well as Çeda did, though. Her inclination was always to step carefully, lest they reveal themselves to the Kings.
And now that he had revealed himself, and brought his story to her, what would a woman like Zaïde do? She would protect herself. Protect her lifelong investment in the House of Maidens. She might even think she’d been protecting Çeda.
His body had been found hours later, Yusam had said. Çeda wondered if Zaïde would have gone to the others for advice, her allies in the House of Kings. She might even have gone to Ihsan, for Çeda was now certain Zaïde meant the Honey-tongued King when she’d said one of them might offer his protection. Had Ihsan condoned this? Had he ordered it?
Staring into Amalos’s vacant eyes, she decided it didn’t matter. Her thoughts strayed back to her conversation in Emre’s cabin on the Javelin. The enemy of my enemy, Emre had said. Is in the end no friend at all, she’d replied. How true those words had been. Her soul was weary from the constant struggle to hide her nature, her heritage, the pain of her people. Indeed, to hide the very existence of her people. Ihsan might have become an ally, but never one she could trust. Better to make the Kings quarrel from within, to make them distrust one another, and see what came of it.
But how to do it? How to set Yusam onto Ihsan’s scent?
Çeda feigned shock. “If a Matron is involved, my Lord King, it seems only logical that she would not be acting alone.”
Yusam nodded. “Go on.”
She put hesitation into her voice. “You would know better than I. The mere is a difficult device to read—”
“Speak, Çedamihn.” His cat-like eyes were hungry.
“Tolovan ad jondu gonfahla . . .”
“What?”
“It’s just . . . I cannot help but think of another betrayal the mere hinted at. On a ship in the desert, a ship you sent me to investigate. Tolovan ad jondu gonfahla, the first mate said.” With crystal clarity, Çeda recalled how Yusam had looked when she’d said those words to him in his palace high atop Tauriyat. He’d frozen, realizing the purpose of the vision had been to deliver him those words. As then, his eyes were filled with confusion and worry, but unlike the last time, they were also brimming with calculation and intent.
As she had so often since entering Yusam’s service, Çeda wondered at the mere. So many threads to draw upon, so many that crossed and recrossed, creating a weave so large it was impossible to comprehend. Here, though, she had shown Yusam a single thread that shone like a shooting star, a thing he could follow with ease to Ihsan’s machinations. And once he found one betrayal, however small, it should be child’s play to discover the rest.
Setting the leaf down beside Amalos’s body, Yusam picked up the lantern and began walking away. “You have been a great service this day, daughter of Ahyanesh
.”
She turned to follow the Jade-eyed King, but gave Amalos one last look. We’ve done this much, at least. Set the Kings to doubting one another, and that’s no small thing.
Chapter 57
KING IHSAN HATED BEING LATE, and yet this day, the morning before Beht Zha’ir, he hardly spared it a thought. Things had been going well—with his plans, with Nayyan, with their child—that he thought just this once the other Kings could wait on him. He entered the Sun Palace with his vizir, Tolovan, by his side. Their footsteps echoed along the grand halls.
Despite his pleasant mood, a cloud hung over this place. It always had. These meetings with the Kings were necessary, even vital to the health of Sharakhai, but he’d always regretted that they’d decided to meet here. The Sun Palace always reminded him of the days when this palace, the thirteenth on Tauriyat, had been called something else, the days when another King had ruled these halls.
He liked to tell himself he hadn’t decided what to do with the other palaces once he and Nayyan ruled Sharakhai, but in his heart he knew the truth. He would bring them down. All of them, Eventide as well. And then he would build one anew using the very stones from those other palaces, one that would dwarf them all high atop Tauriyat. It would be but one step in a long list of steps meant to wipe away the taint the other Kings had lain over the Amber City.
Winding through the palace, he and Tolovan made for the grand space where the Kings met each morning before Beht Zha’ir. The sound of conversation rose as they approached the domed room. It sounded rather soft. Too soft for a full meeting of the Kings.
Tolovan sensed it as well. He motioned to the scalloped archway a dozen paces ahead. “Strange, my Lord King.”
When they came to the room, they found a sizable assemblage that included many Kings, their vizirs and viziras, and other trusted servants, but a number of key members were missing. That Onur, the King of Sloth, had chosen not to join them was of no consequence. What was of consequence was the fact that Kiral, along with Mesut, Cahil, and Sukru, were also missing. There had long been an informal alliance between those four, so it could be that they’d decided to take counsel with one another before joining the rest. If Husamettín weren’t also absent, he might have thought little of it, but with so much conflict brewing, and Ihsan pulling many of the strings to make that happen, he worried.
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