“Well, I turned it over in my head last night,” Konrad said. “If Malijad’s a desert, you’ve only seen a grain of sand. A quiet, boring, and rather serious grain of it. You should get the most out of such a place.” He shrugged. “Don’t forget that I was once a boy from Rzolka myself. So I know what you think. These streets might seem daunting, but we both know how special it is. Someday it might feel like home to you.”
Anna slowed. “You’re allowed to take me there?”
“I know the city as well as any northerner,” Konrad grinned. “The orza’s district, anyway. They have everything and anything.” He gestured through the nearby columns at the cityscape. “They have menageries with all sorts of creatures, and shade-squares with music you couldn’t imagine. Every block has tailors or bakers, or craftsmen with an eye for toy-making.”
Anna gazed at the endless streets, then Konrad. She’d seen the districts well enough, and hearing about lighthearted things only made his suggestion feel perverse. “I’ve outgrown toys.”
“And the rest, panna?”
She watched sunlight paint long slashes along the setstone, wondering if every Dogwood man was as wicked as the guards who’d staffed the torture den. Perhaps Konrad was ignorant to their crimes, just as her father had spoken of being innocent amid his comrades’ misdeeds. Being tempted by baubles and flutes would draw Bora’s scorn, but Anna didn’t care. She needed him to be innocent.
“Show me,” Anna said.
* * * *
They passed through the main gates within the hour. Konrad assured Anna that there was nothing scandalous about their trip, but insisted that their presence remained understated. Anna wore her hood and dark yellow scarf, which most Hazani donned regardless of the weather. Konrad traveled without armor but still had a guarded sway to his arms and neck, much like her father’s. It was the gait of a man who’d killed, and escaped death. Beyond the gates was sprawling chaos. Squat bunkers and sturdy watchtowers, manned by teams of mercenaries, fractured the flow of traffic and towered above the passersby. Down the eastern street, an endless valley between setstone heights, the crowds gave way to a mixture of bazaar stalls and residential quarters. In the sunken dens of some buildings, men smoked from pipes and scar-matted hounds thrashed and bit at one another, surrounded by presses of Gosuri and Hazani and Huuri.
They walked in quiet rhythm, surrounded by the dull thumps of cloth being felted and sacks of grains being loaded. Eventually they reached a quiet plaza with vendors and stone benches. Bushels of palm plants and thorny roots sprouted in the shade.
He led Anna to a wide cart with two sheet-covered tables of merchandise on display. Most items were darkly-stained wood carvings, but some were carved gems, others trinkets with dried claws or drilled bone fragments. The peddler was pale-eyed and thin, his hands tucked behind his back and chest puffed out.
“Do you like anything here?” Konrad asked Anna. He had little interest in the square’s other carts. Nevertheless, he shared a smile with the peddler beneath the cart’s awning.
Anna prodded at a painted shell. “What are they?”
“Just nice things.” Konrad glanced at the vendor, then said something both elegant and unexpected. It was not the harsh tongue of flatspeak, nor a Gosuri dialect. It was as fluid as the words Shem spoke so many cycles ago.
“Where did you learn that?” Anna asked.
Gentle laughter passed between the two men, but Konrad’s eyes darkened at the question. His smile remained with a nervous curl. “Learn what, panna?”
“You just said something to him.” Anna studied the vendor’s face: It was more angular than the Hazani, even with their mixed breeds and differences, and framed with elevated cheekbones. “It wasn’t flatspeak.”
“Ah,” Konrad hummed. “Orsas. Isn’t it beautiful?”
“It’s rare,” Anna replied. She still recalled the tracker’s rebuke in the markets.
“The Dogwood learn things from all over,” Konrad said, picking up a necklace with a sliver of jade and turning it over in his gloves. “Things from Nahora tend to be the most exceptional.” He studied Anna’s face. “Have you heard stories?”
“Some.”
“It’s better than any story,” Konrad said. He held the necklace closer to Anna. “What do you think?”
Afternoon light tumbled through the gem, painting Konrad’s glove with bands of refracted color.
Anna gave a delicate smile. “It’s nice.”
“Do you want it?”
“Maybe someday.” Anna watched the colors twisting, splitting into beautiful ribbons of light. “Besides, I didn’t bring anything with me.”
“Forget your salt,” Konrad winked. “I’d like it to be a gift.”
“For what?”
“For a pleasant walk,” he said with an arched brow. “Is it too egregious?”
She shook her head. “No, but—”
Konrad drew some coins from his coat’s lower pocket, spoke in Orsas to the vendor, and completed the transaction with a nod of appreciation. He held the necklace out for Anna by its dark string, grinning.
“Thank you,” she said, taking the necklace with some reluctance.
Before reaching the kales, undaunted by the crack of explosions and plumes of black smoke from neighboring districts, Konrad helped her secure the necklace. He swept her hair gently aside and knotted the string with a dexterous twist, then lifted the gemstone in his palm so it caught a glint of fading daylight. Anna had never cared for gifts, having always rejected offerings with disguised intentions, but she wondered if Konrad’s intentions were disguised at all. She smiled at the jade fragment.
When Anna braced her door to close it that evening, they stood in silence till Konrad took the initiative, an impish curl in his lips. “Sleep well,” he told her.
“The same to you,” Anna said. Then, before fully sealing the door, she spoke out once more. “Konrad, some of the men talked about a place in the city. They said that traitors are questioned there.”
His expression darkened. “There are several, panna. I’ve never visited, but they exist.”
“They said something happened to one of them.”
Konrad appeared off-guard, but was quick to compose himself. “Sour matters. I wouldn’t dare to force them upon you.”
“Do you trust me?”
“Of course, panna.”
“I heard they found evidence of who did it,” Anna said. “Purple cloth.”
He offered a smile to placate her, but it was wasted. “Rumors about Nahora have always been rampant. Don’t be afraid of their blades. Nahora isn’t what they say.”
“I see.” She cradled her necklace in her hands and thought of Bora’s violet fabric, of the qaufen launched over setstone valleys, of men who struck kators by night. Nahora. “Thank you for the day, Konrad.”
It wasn’t until Anna engaged the lock, turned away, and lifted the jade to the candlelight that she noticed Shem across the room, staring.
But Anna was far too busy thinking of killers to focus on a bruised heart.
Chapter 24
Each night, Anna’s hands crept closer to the unreadable monolith, plunging deeper into its wreath of dark mist and probing for substance. She murmured her secrets as sacrifices to the fog, which sheltered long-dead memories like the flames of wind-stricken candles. Recollections of shrieks on a cold morning, flesh torn open, promises made freely and brokenly unfairly.
End was all it whispered back.
Then she always woke to blackness, her chest aching and forehead clammy, to make the long trek to the foundling hall. The regular nature of her visits made crossing the rooftops habitual, leaving her unwanted opportunities to think. On some trips she thought of Konrad and their daily talks, where he shared inklings of Orsas and stories of his childhood near Kowak. He’d been an apprentice to a fletcher, but when Anna
had described the rigid feathers of the qaufen arrow, his face stiffened and he fell silent. Even so, he granted her enough comfort to wear his necklace, even as she slept, and to think of a life beyond vengeance and guilt. Sometimes she thought of Shem, who hardly spoke to her but glared at her necklace. She thought of the orza and Bora, whom she hadn’t seen in several weeks, and how she hadn’t been summoned to mark new captains. It was as though she’d melded into the masonry of the kales, becoming yet another wastrel.
The work for Jalwar consisted mainly of sorting mailing compartments and correcting his grammatical errors in the river-tongue, but it was exciting to read messages from unknown cities and regions. Some were from Alakeph captains relaying their recruitment numbers, while others were from Halshaf monasteries requesting supplies. Anna wasn’t averse to redirecting sacks of grain or herbs to outlying chapters, falsifying the logistical changes on the hardcopy sheets handled by the kales and its saltmen. She had a deft hand capable of forging nearly anybody’s signature.
For a while, even without Bora, it was good.
But the truth of her existence, the knowledge she couldn’t hide in the shadows forever, visited her in a burlap mask one night. It came as ragged footsteps and murmured arguing between Alakeph men, ending with a shadow falling across Anna’s podium.
She glanced up, entranced by the lamp-lit gaps in the burlap and the swirl of purple irises. But she wasn’t frightened as she surveyed the tracker. “What?”
“Should’ve known,” he said. A pair of Alakeph men stepped behind him in their opal robes, but Anna was quick to motion them away. “How long has this been on?”
“A few weeks,” Anna said, dipping her quill into the ink for a new line. “You came without them?”
The tracker haunted the doorway for a moment, then moved closer with a grumble. He settled into a wicker chair, the folds of his black cloak pooling around the armrests. “They’d see you flayed.”
“Beaten.” Anna glanced up. “They wouldn’t kill me.”
“Beating could break those pretty hands,” he whispered. “But you’re right. Chances are, they wouldn’t have a pence of a solution. Fine little mess you’ve managed to make.”
Anna resumed writing to the monastery in Yelasim. “How’d you find me?” She thought immediately of Shem, however unfair it was. Bora’s insistence on realism meant expecting betrayal.
“That’s the curious thing about this.” His rune was still burning cool white, untarnished by age. “Even if your mind fogs, your body never quite runs down. Sleep isn’t an easy thing, some nights. So imagine my surprise when I spotted that tucked bright hair near the courtyard a few nights ago.”
“And you never followed me?”
“Tried. You’re fast, girl.” He huffed. “Much too fast for these legs.”
Anna studied his eyes, noting the way they caught her stare and then drifted, before returning to her work. “You found me.”
“It took some time, I’ll admit,” the tracker said. “I should have checked here sooner.”
“What’s my punishment?” Setting down her quill, Anna hardened her gaze. “Or will you let the others settle it again?”
Not even his breaths fluttered the burlap. He sat perfectly still, hands meshed upon his thigh. Deep thinking never cooperated with the press of dusk-petals. “I’m not planning on telling the others.”
Anna’s eyes flicked up.
“Words are steady things to me, girl,” the tracker said. “See, now, that’s what you won’t get with the northerners. They’ll weave lies into prophecy.”
“What do you want, then?”
“It’s a concrete thing,” he replied. Despite his tone there was nothing threatening in the slump of his arms or the sprawled tangle of his legs. “You’ll be called upon by my brethren for another marking ceremony, just before the Days of Seed, some sort of northern song-and-dance nonsense. Do what you do, and we’ll all be right for it.”
Her guts lurched. There was no way for the tracker to know what she’d seen in the chambers, and her cooperation was already expected. Its phrasing as a request put her on edge. “What makes it different?”
“Different, eh?”
“I’ve never turned a mark down,” Anna said. “You make this sound like a new deal. You don’t gain a thing from keeping my secret.”
“Maybe I just like you. How’s that?”
“You like what I can do,” she whispered.
The tracker gave a wobbling nod. “Right. And if you stop marking, we have a problem. We. You and I. We’re good together, but if this all falls apart, it’s done.”
“You would lose more than me,” Anna said darkly, picking up her quill again.
“Can’t fight that,” the tracker agreed. “But we have so much to gain, you see? It’s growing close, Anna.”
Before the quill’s nib touched the parchment, Anna froze. “Close to what?”
“We could have it all,” the tracker said, his fingers tensing and loosening upon the armrests. “Fifteen traitorous pups cut down in the night, and another ten on our draw of the battle line. Not a single cartel in Malijad can say they don’t know us any longer. We’re either bound to them, bleeding them, or buying them.” He nodded into the folds of his cloak. “There’s just this festival and the last strikes. Then it’s southward, Anna. Then it’s back home.”
Anna’s nib hovered, a rivulet of black ink drooling onto the parchment as she squeezed the quill. She could hardly envision it. Moving back to the lakes and forests and mountains, speaking her old tongue with strangers, being welcomed by friends and distant kin by virtue of her flesh’s shade alone.
And yet she recalled mother and father. She imagined what she’d do to them, or what she’d order her subordinates to do. She saw troops marching under her banner and killing at the movement of her wrist, dens of agony and infected scars, men screaming into the blackness for help that would never arrive.
The ink pooled, and she glanced away. “You just need me to mark them?”
“Simple cuts, Anna. We’re close enough to lick it.”
She lifted her quill. “What do you know about Nahora?”
Stillness came over the tracker in a cold wave. “Runts,” he said at last. “Something you need to say?”
Despite the memories of the qaufen wavering in Bora’s hand, and explosives rupturing the kator’s shell, Anna held her tongue. There was numbing safety in the tracker’s vision of the future. “They’re just mentioned in the tomes.”
“Wasted words.” The tracker looked around the office, scrutinizing ledgers and stacks of missives. “But what I told you, about liking you . . . you believe that, don’t you?”
Anna glanced down at her papers. “I think so.”
“Pravda,” the tracker muttered. “Trust me. When I say mark, I mean it.” His voice slipped from drug-slurred advice to grave warning. “Keep the breath in your throat, girl. We’re so close to it. And whatever you think, I can’t control what happens to you forever. Consider this an ounce of my heart-blood.”
Anna nodded.
The tracker slid his chair back, grating the wooden legs against the floor. He gathered up the pleats of his cloak and stood, one hand bracing his knee, the other combing the air for balance, before wandering to the doorway. “Tell me, girl,” he said. “What do you think of that captain?”
Anna hadn’t stopped watching the tracker as he departed, but now she felt exposed, his eyes whirling back on her without reason. “Which one?”
“Your faithful hound,” he spat. “Konrad.”
Anna reddened when she heard the name, but managed to bury the truth in the rapid tapping of her quill. “He’s a good man,” she said. “He’s respectful, and he does his job well.”
Shadows thickened in the creases of the tracker’s mask and cloak, leaving only his rune amid the blackness. “I see,” he
whispered at last. He backed away and ducked through the threshold.
As Anna attempted to return to her writing, she noticed a trickle of pale white amassing in her periphery. She glanced up at a cluster of Alakeph men in the doorway, their hands resting on the grips of sheathed blades.
Only then did Anna turn her thoughts to writing. She wrote letters with words she’d never fathomed and addressed them to monasteries she’d never visit, her every missive informed by her thinking mind’s certainty of the bloodshed to come.
Chapter 25
Their world was one of murder. Numberless warriors filled the chamber that evening, gathered around the main circle and crowding tiers of scaffolding that stretched into darkness. Brazier light gave way to savage glares and slashes of paint upon dark flesh. A soft pall of nerkoya smoke clouded the air. The silhouettes and quick movements flashed through the haze, never shrouded enough to be ignored. They scarred their flesh with needles and screeched and slashed their palms, smearing blood across the floors and walls.
They wished to be animals.
No longer did they check their equipment or tighten their straps for battle. They didn’t pore over ruji barrels, nor the cutting edge of short blades. Flasks made dizzying circles around the gathering, and puffs of mica flared in the lamplight, but the rituals were vestiges of a dying world, surface gestures of a time when faith and fear had been real things, when appealing to gods or stars had been essential to survival. After so much hunting and killing and returning without losses, they were no longer afraid. They fed from the sadism of splintering doors and dragging their enemies into darkness.
Over time they’d adopted a singular goddess.
Anna, who brought ruin and broken bones and blackened setstone to every stretch of Malijad. Anna, who’d granted them violence and immunity superior to the conquerors of the old songs. Anna, who couldn’t fathom how many had perished at her hands.
She stood in their circle, rigid as a great oak. Beyond the ring of dim lanterns the wolves shifted and crowded her, threatening to break the thinking mind’s concentration on her blade and the droplets of sweat snaking between her fingers. In Anna’s mind, she was a branch bent, but never broken beneath the press of snowfall.
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