When Ihsan tried to speak again, Onur pulled him away from the wall, but Yusam forestalled him with a hand on Onur’s meaty forearm. “Let him speak.”
Ihsan laughed, spit blood to one side. He could see the humor in this, even if they couldn’t—Ihsan’s own actions acting like trail markers in a forest, leading Yusam bit by bit to this, his ignominious unveiling. “Your fears were so easy to play, my Lord King.”
“You meant for this to happen.” Yusam motioned to the immensity of the darkened vault, to the softly glowing floor behind him. In that moment, Ihsan saw something. A trick of the light. A trick of his own addled mind. He knew not which.
“I . . .” Ihsan paused as a wave of pain cause him to cringe and shut his eyes until it had passed. “I never meant for any of this to happen.”
Yusam nodded to Onur, who took Ihsan in both his hands, lifted him, and drove him against the wall like a battering ram. Ihsan fell to the floor, Onur staring at him with porcine eyes, smiling. The ringing became more pronounced, so much so that he could no longer hear what Yusam was saying even though he could see his lips moving.
Yusam had just nodded to Onur again when something dark blurred in from his left. It retreated just as quickly, leaving a dark line across Yusam’s throat.
Blood sprayed from the wound, coating Ihsan in time with Yusam’s beating heart. Onur turned to look for the threat, and he’d just reached for Ihsan’s knife in Yusam’s quivering hands when a shadow cut across his forearm, leaving another line that began to flow with blood. Another came as a shadowy form appeared behind him. Onur shouted in rage and pain, turning once more, but the shadow slipped away like a cloud of vapor and appeared again behind him.
This time Ihsan saw an arm driving forward, a knife sinking deep into Onur’s back.
Azad. It was Azad. His savior. Nayyan in disguise.
But Onur’s bulk had always been deceptive. He lashed out with an elbow as Azad appeared again. It caught Azad across the head with a loud thump and she went flying, tripping over Ihsan’s legs as Onur began to run, lumbering from the room, blood flowing from a half-dozen wounds, staining his skin and soaking his brown clothes black.
Nayyan, wearing Azad’s skin, pushed herself off the floor. She reached for her two knives—the ones that had belonged to her father before she’d inherited them—but her hands couldn’t seem to grip them. She stopped, simply breathed for a moment, then tried again. This time she managed to get her hand on one long knife, then the other.
She swiveled her head to look at him.
“A fine lot we are,” Ihsan said.
She laughed with Azad’s face, Azad’s smile. But the eyes . . . The eyes were hers.
“He cannot escape this palace alive,” he told her.
She nodded. “I know.” Then she stood and loped from the room.
With the sun warming the horizon to the east, Ihsan watched as Yusam’s carriage was rolled off the edge of the palace road below. The driver’s throat had been slit. Both the driver and Yusam were in the carriage itself, unfortunate victims of this terrible night.
It would take a good deal of explaining, but simplicity in such circumstances always worked best. He and Onur had both come. Yusam had seen the attack in his mere, but had warned Ihsan too late for him to do anything about it. They’d inspected the vaults and then left together. What had happened after that Ihsan wouldn’t learn until this morning, when the messengers who came to his palace would find the carriage and the bodies and inform Ihsan what had happened.
It would bring more independent witnesses. It would strengthen Ihsan’s version of the tale. But only if Onur was found and dealt with as well.
Footsteps came into the room behind him. “Yes, Tolovan?”
“King Azad has returned.”
“Send her in.”
“Of course, my Lord King.”
Tolovan said nothing of his slip of the tongue. He hadn’t meant to call Azad her. He’d been so very careful since the night the assassin had killed her father. He’d have to redouble his efforts. Assuming, of course, he could manage to retain his foothold on this mountain.
Azad entered the room. The look on his face was answer enough, but he still asked, “What of Onur?”
“Gone. I tracked him to the edges of the palace grounds, but then found animal tracks.”
“A panther?” Ihsan asked. It was Onur’s favorite form.
“A cat’s prints, to be sure. I followed the blood all along his trail until it neared the walls of Tauriyat, and then they simply vanished.”
Ihsan shook his head. He should have been more prepared for Yusam. He should have had someone at hand to deal with Onur. But he’d never been one to dwell on the past. Look ahead, look ahead. What’s done is done.
“What will we do?” Azad asked.
“Speak to Zeheb. Tell him the tale. All of it. See if he can find Onur. If we find him before he reaches the other Kings, we kill him. And even if he does return, there is little love for Onur in the House of Kings. We may yet use that against him.”
Azad paused. “Are you sure it wouldn’t be better to leave Sharakhai?”
Ihsan turned and stared directly into her eyes. “I would rather die.” Azad’s worries began to melt the longer Ihsan stared. “We’ll see our way through.”
Azad nodded and left, resolved if nothing else.
Ihsan, meanwhile, turned and strode back to his balcony and looked out over Sharakhai, wondering, as the sun’s first rays began to steal over the city, what the days ahead would bring.
Chapter 65
ÇEDA LIMPED THROUGH THE DESERT, one hand pressed to the wounds along her ribs. The chill of the long night had finally been burned away by the morning sun. It was nearing midday, and she’d been walking since leaving the place where she’d left Mesut’s body, where she’d left Sehid-Alaz to whatever fate awaited him. How long ago that seemed. The passing of an age. The dawn of a new world.
She turned and looked back along her path, wondering when the Kings would find her. Surely they would. It was only a matter of time. But she would not give in. She refused to stop now.
She had killed another King. Two lay dead at her hands. Another had been killed by her mother. If the gods were kind a fourth, Cahil, would die from the wounds she and Sehid-Alaz had inflicted.
Remembering how well Cahil had healed from the tip of her poisoned arrow, she laughed, the sound strangely deadened in the open desert. The gods were anything but kind. “They are cruel!” she shouted to the desert wind. She spread her arms wide and spun while staring at the clear blue sky. “Do you hear me? The gods are cruel!”
She waited for their response, but none came save the skitter of spindrift and the sigh of the sand.
She drew her sword. “Do you fear to face me, then?” She lifted it high and shouted at the top of her lungs, “Do you fear me?” She swung her sword down, slapping the sand with the flat of the blade. An amber spray lifted into the air, beautiful in its simplicity, then fell. “Come now! Face me! I am but a mortal!” For a long while she waited, but the desert only listened until her anger waned.
She resumed her pace, sword still in hand, feeling dizzy from lack of water. All her planning and she hadn’t thought to bring any water. At least she had her mother’s book. She felt for it.
And found the pouch missing.
She stopped, dropped her sword. Her hands felt along her belt, over her battle dress. Breath of the desert, it was gone. She looked back along her path, then ran over the dunes, searching, wondering whether it had been buried as the dunes shifted.
The hole inside her where her mother had once been widened. Threatened to consume her. She would let it. She would see her mother again.
She stared along the horizon. Toward Sharakhai. Gods how she wished to return and sit at Ibrahim’s feet and listen to him tell the tale of the desert’s birth. H
ow she wished she could watch the Haddah flow while leaning over Bent Man Bridge. But that was her past, wasn’t it? Like water beneath a bridge, she could return to that place no longer.
She turned, stared at the dune where her sword had fallen. It glinted dully, a gift of the Kings, a symbol of their rule, but like her, might it not become something different? Might not its own fate have passed it by? Might it not look forward to a new day?
She strode toward it, refusing to look back. When she reached the dark shamshir she held it before her, the dents and nicks that marked its length clear beneath the bright sun. “Together, then, yes?”
She sheathed it and limped on across the sand, feeling another wave of dizziness wash over her. She knew the signs well. She knew she needed water, but she’d been so desperate last night to escape that she hadn’t paid attention to her path. She might turn north, head for the aqueduct. She might climb it and drink the clear mountain water, but the chance of being spotted by the Silver Spears or the Maidens was too great. She thought of stopping at the blooming fields, but those too were dangerous. Any of the asirim, willingly or not, might alert the Kings to her presence. Or even some of the Maidens were they attentive enough to sense it.
So she trekked on, hoping to find one of the small oases whose locations were drilled into every Maiden. It would have been an easy journey if not for her wounds. But the hammer wound from Cahil ached. As did the one on her head that Yndris had inflicted with the same weapon. A dozen other wounds she felt with every step, but the cuts from Mesut’s gauntlets were the most troubling. Those wounds felt hot. A terrible sign, but one she couldn’t focus on. Not yet. Find water, she told herself over and over, and then she could deal with possible infection or poison.
She came to a ridge, hoping for any sign of a water source, a bit of green, birds circling above. But there were none. Only a small, empty valley. She climbed down, slipped along the rock, struck her head as she slid toward the bottom.
She woke some hours later, woozier than she’d been earlier. From the fall. From thirst. From her wounds. She didn’t entirely know. She levered herself up and walked onward as the sun began to set. She would welcome the cool night air, but she didn’t wish to stop. She needed water, before she rested, or she might never get up again.
The world threatened to tilt with every step. The wind picked up, occluding her path. She wasn’t even sure she was headed in the right direction anymore.
She collapsed to her hands and knees as the sun began to fail. She stood and fell again not ten paces later. She felt the wound on her shin, but only vaguely, much as she could sense the sun beyond a bank of fog. She felt the other wounds as well, but now they were little more than scratches.
The deeper wounds from Mesut, however. Those she still felt. They were reaching into her, deeper and deeper, inching toward her heart. She tried one last time to rise, but it was too painful. She rolled over to face the sky. “You did well, memma,” she said, thinking of Azad and his death. “We can trade tales, yes? Of the Kings we killed?”
She fell asleep reaching for her mother’s hand.
She woke to the sounds of shuffling, of sand shifting. Footsteps coming nearer, but hesitantly. A Maiden? A King? She rolled over and saw a dark form crawling over the sand. It scuttled like a scarab, its yellowed eyes haunted.
“Kerim,” she whispered.
He came closer. He knelt and held her hand, put the back of it against the blackened skin of his cheek. She could feel the sorrow within him. For her death, perhaps. Or Sehid-Alaz’s. Or maybe it was sorrow for their people.
She could feel the conflict within him as well. This was not easy, what he was doing—leaving the service of the Kings—but a bond had formed between him and Çeda. It gave him some small amount of freedom. Perhaps that was what he lamented, the fact that Çeda would soon be gone, and his freedom with it.
“I need water,” she said.
Kerim stared into her eyes, then looked about, scanning the horizon. He shuffled away as sleep took her once more.
A snuffling sound pulled her back from the land of dreams. A moment later a small yip broke the silence of the desert. She felt something licking her side. It tickled at first, but then it touched the wound, which was either poisoned or infected or both, and the pain became bright white. It immediately began to feel better, however. She opened her eyes. Stared at the thin morning clouds high above, row after row of them, like furrows in a field plowed by the gods themselves.
She rolled her head and saw a furry face staring at hers. Large ears. Long nose. Tall legs spread wide to lower its head.
A maned wolf. A white maned wolf. The one she’d seen with Emre on their first trip to the blooming fields. The one that had saved her from the black laughers after Dardzada had tattooed her back.
“And where have you come from?” she asked weakly.
The wolf huffed, its eyes wide, waiting for something, though Çeda knew not what. Twenty paces away, Kerim crouched at the top of a dune, the same turmoil still roiling inside him. He watched her and the wolf, shifting this way and that on the sand, as if his body demanded he leave this place.
“Are you hungry?” Çeda said to the white wolf. “I’m afraid I’ve nothing for you this time.”
It reached down and closed its mouth around her arm. No, her sleeve. It tugged, then yipped, almost as if it wanted to play, then it ran off, losing itself behind a dune.
She groaned as she tried to get up, but her wounds flared to life, and a fresh wave of dizziness and nausea overtook her.
The wolf returned, bounding toward her, huffing again as it reached her side. It waited still as a statue as she reached up, as she pulled herself up by its coat. She managed to reach her feet this time. Gods, how tall it had become. Its shoulders were even with her chest. Its head was higher than hers.
Together, they walked toward the top of the dune. There, lying in the early morning sun, were a dozen other maned wolves with brown coats, red manes, black ears. She didn’t know if all of them were the same, but she recognized the massive one with the scars along its muzzle. When it saw them, the scarred one howled, and the wolves all stood.
Off they went in a line, southeast.
Çeda and the white wolf followed. And Kerim came behind.
Acknowledgments
This book marks my sixth published novel and my ninth book written (ignoring those few false starts quite a few years ago). I was told it was going to get easier at some point. I’m still wondering when that’s going to happen, because so far, each book seems every bit as hard as the last one, if not harder. With Blood Upon the Sand was certainly no exception. This was an ambitious novel. There was a lot of pressure for the second book in the series to move things forward in a strong and positive way. It was also a challenge to expand on the many threads that were introduced in Twelve Kings in Sharakhai. I’m proud of the result, and I hope you enjoyed it, but I certainly didn’t do it alone. There are a lot of people to thank for helping me along the way.
First and foremost, I need to thank my wife, Joanne, and my two wonderful kids for carving out time for me to pursue this career. They sacrifice constantly for me, and I’m eternally grateful.
I’d like to put out a special shout-out to three people that put in a lot of time helping me to steer the ship. Paul Genesse, your help, as always, was crucial in finding the heart of the story, staying true to it, and accentuating it wherever I could. Rob Ziegler, thanks for the help overall in critiquing and plot bashing, but especially for your advice on the book’s opening chapter. It was an addition that created shockwaves that were felt throughout the entire novel. And Justin Landon, thanks for your thoughts on the first third of the book in particular. Your feedback really made me strip the story down to its essentials to keep things moving.
Others read the book at various stages and provided valuable feedback. To Sarah Chorn, Tracy Erickson, Chè
Adventure, and Femke Giesolf, thank you so much for reading this not-very-short manuscript and providing your thoughts on it. I truly appreciate it.
The entire team at DAW Books deserves a healthy round of applause for helping me with so many things along the way, from Betsy Wollheim providing not only editing, but art direction, publishing advice, and so many other things, to my copy editor, Marylou Capes-Platt, always kicking my proverbial arse to write better, to the endless efforts of the production staff, proof readers, marketing and sales, and others who helped with endless tasks that go along with bringing a book to market. Likewise, the Gollancz team have been terribly helpful, not only my UK editor, Gillian Redfearn, but the wonderful staff who help to get the books into the hands of readers; thank you so much for all your unsung efforts.
To my agent, Russ Galen, thank you for tending my career, bringing me along as I grow into this new profession. And thanks to Danny and Heather Baror for bringing the series to a wider audience worldwide. The very thought that my books are being read in multiple countries in multiple languages is a constant thrill for me.
Lastly, thank you to the fans, who have embraced Çeda and the larger tale of Sharakhai. Your support has been tremendous already. I can’t wait to see where we take this series.
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With Blood Upon the Sand Page 75