When Jackals Storm the Walls

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Emre waved at him. “You see?”

  “Well she is pretty feisty,” Macide said, sharing a wink with Frail Lemi.

  Frail Lemi laughed.

  “I’m serious,” Emre said.

  “So am I,” Macide shot back. “I can’t control her thoughts, nor the thoughts of others. So we’ll go. We’ll meet with the Qaimiri queen.”

  “And then what?”

  “We do what we’ve always done. Navigate the shifting sands as best we can. Some may willingly drink the poisoned broth Rasime brews, but many others will see the truth, that we did what was best for the people of the desert.”

  “Aren’t you worried Queen Meryam has other purposes for you?”

  “Because of the Bloody Passage?”

  “No, because I heard she doesn’t like men with tattoos.” Emre’s head was starting to hurt again. “Of course because of the Bloody Passage.”

  “And if I sent someone else to treat with her for me? What sort of message would that send?”

  It was Frail Lemi who answered. “It would tell her you’re rather attached to your head.” Always proud when he thought he’d come up with something witty, he smiled that broad smile of his—the honest one, not the one he used when he was about to carve a man up.

  Macide, sword raised, examined the edge against the sunlight. “I do like it attached.” With a small frown, he lowered the blade and continued running it over the sharpening block.

  Emre’s head, the wound he’d taken when Darius had struck him with a spade, had never healed properly, and it was starting to flare up again. He rubbed his temples, hoping to prevent the pain from cascading into the sort that would leave him writhing on the deck. “That you’re going to Mazandir should be enough. Let me meet with Queen Meryam’s ambassador. I’ll speak for you.”

  “I appreciate that, young falcon.” Satisfied with the first shamshir, Macide started in on the second. “But it’s the queen herself who will be speaking for Sharakhai, so you see, I have to go.”

  The brightness of the sun became suddenly brighter. The pain rose to new heights. “Queen Meryam is coming herself . . .”

  “That’s right,” Macide said, “and she’s—”

  His words trailed away, for just then the pain at the back of Emre’s head became too much and he slumped to the deck and curled into a ball.

  Frail Lemi was right there beside him. “Get Dardzada!” he howled, then ran his big hand in circles over Emre’s back.

  “Was he like this on the journey back?” Macide asked softly.

  Emre curled up tighter. Every sound, every utterance, felt like a nail being driven through his skull.

  “Not so bad as this,” Frail Lemi said, then swept Emre up in his great arms and bore him toward the rear of the ship. “You’re going to be all right,” he whispered like a father to his sick child. “Just hold on, Emre. Dardzada’s on the way.”

  Soon Emre lay in his bunk and Dardzada was examining him. “I asked you to let me take a look at you in the valley,” he said in that judgmental tone of his.

  Frail Lemi immediately shushed him. “Soft as a sparrow’s flight, Dardzada.”

  Emre thought Dardzada might ignore Lemi, refuse to take any sort of advice from another, especially a lunk of a man who’d never had any proper training in medicine, yet when Dardzada spoke again, it was in low, hushed tones. “It’s been like this since Darius struck you with the shovel?”

  He pulled Emre’s eyes open and examined them. In that brief moment, Emre spied Dardzada’s apprentice, a waif of a girl named Clara, standing nearby, watching everything with a keen-eyed gaze.

  “No,” Emre managed. “It’s been getting worse.”

  When Dardzada probed the back of his head with his fingertips, Emre’s world turned to stars. He tried to make himself small, but it didn’t work. The pain became so intense that for a long while he could only moan, which made things worse.

  Sometime later, the pain felt like it had ebbed. He couldn’t be sure if he’d blacked out. All he knew was that he could think again, and Frail Lemi was gone and Dardzada was speaking to him.

  “You fought Hamid like this?”

  “I had to,” Emre said.

  “You bloody stupid fool, why?”

  “Honor,” Emre mumbled. “His word against mine.”

  “You actually think people in this tribe would take Hamid’s word over yours?” Dardzada prized Emre’s jaw open and stuffed a piece of bark between his cheek and gum. It was the size of an almond and tasted bitter, like a lemon rind gone bad. “You’ve underestimated your standing in the tribe, Emre, and you’ve vastly overestimated Hamid’s.”

  He shoved another piece of bitter bark into his other cheek. “Leave them there. They’ll help with the internal swelling.”

  Dardzada left with Clara. There was a hushed conversation outside the cabin door, but Emre couldn’t make it out. They’re going to send me back, he thought. Macide’s going to see how useless I am and he’s going to send me back.

  He woke to someone rubbing his hair gently. It was Çeda. By then it was dark outside, the only source of light a small oil lantern on his desk. For a moment it felt like they were back in their place in Roseridge, and she was helping to heal him after some run-in with the Spears or a bout with yellow fever.

  “What?” she asked, and he realized he’d been staring at her.

  “Do we have any olives left?”

  Çeda, bless her, knew exactly what he meant. “I think so. And a half a loaf from Tehla’s I bought this morning.”

  “I’ll get the bread and olives,” he said.

  “I’ll get the wine.”

  They both laughed as she ran her fingernails through his hair. Gods it felt good. With her other hand, she grabbed a mug of water and handed it to him. “Dardzada’s orders.”

  Emre rolled his eyes, but only because it’s what he would have done back then—he had always been a terrible patient. He took the mug and downed half of it in one go, then lay back down. He was exhausted.

  “Is this what you were hiding from me in the valley?”

  Emre shrugged. He was too embarrassed to say it. He shouldn’t have let the pain go on for so long.

  “You stupid, stubborn ass,” she said.

  “Look who’s talking.”

  “You can’t go to Mazandir like this.”

  “Is that what Macide’s saying?”

  “Would you blame him if he did?”

  “Çeda . . .”

  “Dardzada said to give it some time, but he’s not optimistic.” She shook him gently until he was looking straight into her eyes. “You don’t need to go. You can head back on a skiff and heal in the valley until this is all over.”

  “Stop trying to protect me.”

  “Stop being an idiot. You’re hurt, Emre. Badly.”

  “No. My fight with Hamid just made it worse is all. I just need a bit of time to heal.” Çeda opened her mouth to speak, but Emre talked over her. “Everything’s going to be decided soon. You know it and I know it. I’m not going to go back to some valley to lay there until it’s all over. I won’t.”

  “If this wound is going to heal as fast as you say it will, then you’ll be back with us soon enough.”

  “If it heals as fast as I say then it can heal while we sail.”

  “Emre, if you’re not going to say it, I will. You might become a liability. To yourself. To this mission. To the tribe.”

  He closed his eyes. It hurt to hear those words, particularly coming from Çeda, who’d been getting him out of trouble since they were kids. But he was man enough to admit that there was truth in her words—he very well might become a liability. Could he live with himself if his headaches came at the wrong time and jeopardized their negotiations with the queen?

  “Look,” he said. “We have a few wee
ks before we hit Mazandir. I can take a skiff at any time. Let Dardzada try to work his magic. If he can’t, I’ll take a skiff then.”

  She looked as if she were going to say no—he could see the words forming on her lips—but then she released her breath in a long, exasperated sigh. “The gods cursed me the day your path crossed mine.”

  “A curse for you, maybe”—he took her hand in his and stroked her fingers gently—“a blessing for me.”

  She looked as if she were about to say something biting, but then she leaned in, kissed him on the lips, and whispered, “Your charms won’t work on me, Emre Aykan’ava.”

  “Won’t they?” he asked with a smile.

  “No,” she said, and kissed him again. “They won’t.”

  Then she lay behind him on the bunk and pulled him against her chest. The movement made the pain in his head flare, but it soon subsided. Their breaths fell into sync, became long together, and the warmth in Emre’s heart did as much to bear him toward sleep as the feeling of Çeda cradling him in her arms.

  Chapter 39

  ON THE PATIO of an old tea house, Davud sat with Esmeray, sipping tea at a table so tiny it was likely to tip over at the first stiff wind. He looked up as the pot-bellied proprietor waddled over with a steel pot and sent fresh tea streaming down from the long, curving spout in an impressively long arc with hardly a drop spilt.

  “Good aim,” Davud said.

  The proprietor smiled with a wink and waddled away. Esmeray, meanwhile, rolled her eyes. “Men and their streams of warm liquid.”

  “You’re just jealous.”

  “Of being able to whip it out and piss wherever you please? Think again, Davud. That’s vulgarity masquerading as sport.”

  Davud smiled an impish smile and sipped his tea noisily.

  “Boys,” Esmeray said under her breath, then glanced up and down the street. “They’re not coming, you know.”

  Davud was tranquil about it. “Let’s give them a bit more time.”

  The only other people on the patio were a trio of old women gabbing at the opposite end. The buildings on the near side of the street were tightly packed and tall. Their shadows angled down, slicing the battered cobblestone road neatly in two.

  Across the street was an old, blocky mill with a mudbrick home crouched beside it. Davud could hear the mill grinding away within and a man barking out orders to his children, several of which occasionally ran to and from the nearby house. One of them, a boy of eleven, had a pronounced limp. He stopped in the yard, watching, waiting. When Davud shook his head, he kept going and lost himself inside the mill house.

  The shadows grew longer. Esmeray and Davud finished their second cups of tea. The three old women at the other table laughed at some joke. When the women collected their things and left in a meandering cluster, an amberlark swooped in and began pecking beneath their abandoned table. The proprietor came out and collected the dishes and cups, trying and failing to shoo the amberlark away.

  Esmeray, swirling the remains of her tea with a spoon, stood in a rush. “We’re wasting our time.”

  Davud was just about to relent when he caught movement down the street. Leaning his chair back so he could see past Esmeray, he saw an old Kundhuni man with a strange, ambling gait walking toward the tea house with a much younger and delicate-looking Mirean woman by his side.

  The Kundhuni man was the blood mage, Undosu, one of the Enclave’s inner circle. The young woman was Meiying. She wore a dress of marigold silk with billowing sleeves, belted with a wide bolt of persimmon cloth. The overall effect was fetching and accented her jet-black hair, which was wrapped into a perfect bun. She had yet to turn sixteen, yet so impressive was her ability to control magic, so sharp was her mind, that she’d found her way to a seat in the Enclave’s inner circle.

  The two of them approached Davud and Esmeray’s table. They were seated. Fresh tea was brought, the proprietor displaying his pouring skills once again until he came to Undosu, who immediately raised his hands. “This belly of mine is so full I’m likely to burst.” He wore simple homespun clothes and a beaten leather cap with sea shells along the top. The cap’s tassels hung alongside his clean-shaven cheeks, and his tuft of a beard somehow made him look both humorous and wise.

  As Esmeray studied them warily, Davud took out the brass compass Willem had given him and set it beside Undosu’s empty tea cup. Just as Willem had said, the compass had led him straight to Undosu. Undosu, completely unaware Nebahat had owned such a device, had made the compass itself a condition of this meeting. He scooped it off the tabletop with wrinkled, sun-damaged hands and stuffed it into the pouch at his belt.

  “So?” he said, sucking on a long, unlit pipe.

  “We asked you here,” Davud began, “because we’ve uncovered concerning news about the Enclave’s activities.”

  Meiying sipped her tea. “Concerning news,” she said in perfect Sharakhan.

  “Yes. For months Nebahat has been overseeing a project in the collegia’s hall of records. Using the names of the scarabs they’d taken after the Night of Endless Swords—”

  “The project is known to us,” Meiying interrupted. “The House of Kings hopes to forge ties with Tribe Khiyanat and eventually sway them. They are, after all, spearheading the alliance that’s forming in the desert.”

  “There’s a deeper purpose, though,” Davud went on. “A darker purpose. The names found were fed to Nebahat. In turn, Nebahat saw to it that many of those identified were sent as tributes to the blooming fields.”

  Undosu’s teeth clacked against his pipe as he took a puff. “You’re saying they were murdered.”

  “I am.”

  Davud told them how he’d followed Altan’s trail to the collegia, which had led him to Cassandra, Altan’s fellow collegia student who, along with Altan, had been researching lineage records for those with blood of the thirteenth tribe. Eventually he came to Nebahat and how he’d orchestrated the whole affair. “Those found in Altan and Cassandra’s research were then compelled to go to the blooming fields and feed themselves to the adichara.”

  “Your proof?” Undosu asked.

  At this, Davud beckoned toward the mill house, where the boy stood staring. He approached, limping badly, with naked fear on his face, and when he reached the table, one hand gripped the opposite elbow. He looked like he wanted to draw himself inward and keep doing it until he simply disappeared. He shot glances at them all but seemed especially fearful of Esmeray and her ivory eyes, which was ironic since she was probably the least dangerous person at the table.

  “It’s true?” Undosu asked in his thick accent. “You were sent to the blooming fields?”

  Davud didn’t think it was possible, but the boy suddenly seemed even more nervous. “I don’t remember it, but since I woke up in one of the groves, I must’ve been.”

  “Do you remember who sent you?”

  He shook his head, then glanced at Davud while waving toward the mill house. “Like I told him, I heard a sound behind the mill near nightfall on Beht Zha’ir. I went to look and before I could blink twice I was standing in the blooming fields, staring up at the Tattered Prince.”

  Undosu considered this, then swung his sallow gaze to Davud. “Forgive me, but the boy doesn’t seem to know much.”

  “Tell them what you told me,” Davud prompted. “About the smell.”

  The boy shrugged. “It was like—” He paused, and seemed to come to some decision. “Here now . . . I agreed to come and talk because he said it would make my family safe. If whoever did this will come back because I’m talking to you—”

  “No one will come for you,” Undosu said calmly.

  The boy looked miserable. Davud felt for him. The fates had given him a bad shake, but he had courage and was doing his best to deal with it. “I need to know my family is safe,” he finally said.

  “If what you say is
true”—Undosu paused, puffing on his pipe—“we’ll talk to the man ourselves, and we’ll have your house watched until we do. Is that sufficient?”

  The boy’s tight frame lost a bit of its tension. “The air smelled of chicken.”

  Undosu smiled. “Chicken?”

  “Well, not the chicken itself, but the lime and the spices they put on it.”

  “That who puts on it?”

  “The Malasani. Who roast the kebabs in the bazaar near the spice market.”

  Undosu and Meiying exchanged a look. They knew as well as Davud did that the paste Nebahat applied to his forehead was made from similar peppers and spices.

  “Thank you,” Undosu said. “You can go home.”

  It looked like a weight had just been lifted from the boy’s shoulders. “No one will come for us?”

  “Not a soul,” Undosu promised.

  After a tremulous smile, he was running with his off-balance gait, momentarily scaring the persistent amberlark. As he headed into the mill house, a dog barked and the door clattered shut.

  “So what is it you want?” Undosu asked. “For us to stop Nebahat?”

  Esmeray’s ivory eyes flashed. “That will be a start, yes, but Nebahat isn’t doing this alone. The orders came from higher up.”

  Meiying tilted her head, a concerned look on her perfect face. “You’re suggesting Prayna was involved.”

  “More than that,” Davud replied. “I think it came from the House of Kings. I think Queen Meryam herself asked Prayna to do it.”

  “Prayna was born and raised in the Shallows,” Meiying said calmly. “She protects the west end, even more than Esmeray does.”

  “That may be,” Esmeray said, “but she’s never had any great love for the thirteenth tribe.”

  “How would you know?” Meiying asked.

  “I would know better than you! What Prayna cares about most is protecting her interests.”

  “The Enclave’s interests,” Meiying corrected.

  “Her interests,” Esmeray repeated. “The only question is, what did Meryam offer her in return?”