Conqueror's Blood (Gunmetal Gods Book 2)

by Zamil Akhtar

  Kato opened the door, grabbed my chair, and wheeled me into the hallway, where Vera was chatting with a eunuch. He returned to his office and shut the door.

  There weren’t any traitors — aside from myself — so I needed to create some to make Kato fear for his life. And what’s the best place to find rats? Underground, of course.

  More specifically, in the dungeons, where I’d put several soulshifting bloodrunes. A soulshifting rune could be written with any blood flavor, but it would only allow me to possess someone nearby, within twenty feet or so of the rune, who carries that flavor. This was among the few scenarios in which my own common flavor could be useful — where any flavor could be useful.

  I’d been putting soulshifting runes of each flavor everywhere and taking notes on who in the palace carried which flavor, so I could try to be targeted with whom I possessed. I put a conqueror’s blood soulshifting rune in the wine cellar, even, with the intention of having Vera lure Cyra down there, if I wanted to possess her. Obviously, I’d also put one in the great hall because possessing Cyra, while not my first plan, was one of many backups. Though I hid my runes as best I could, that dreaded eunuch Sambal had discovered them, somehow, and so now I wished I’d been more careful.

  After Vera carried me into the closet — I told her I felt calm in there — I focused my mind on where I’d planted one of the runes. I touched it with my mind, and it glowed.

  I found myself brushing a mop back and forth on a grimy floor. Faint candles within hanging metal lamplights lit the hallway. Around me were iron doors with shut portholes. Not ideal to have soulshifted into the dungeon’s custodian instead of a guard, but it would have to do.

  I opened the nearest porthole. A middle-aged, one-handed man was lying on a pallet. Obviously not Hadrith. I closed it and continued mopping down the hallway, peeking into portholes all the while. A stinking Kashanese man in rags; a singing Abyadi sailor; a man sleeping in his own vomit. But no Hadrith — where the hell was Kato keeping him?

  Perhaps the large, red-tinted door at the end of the hallway? I mopped my way to it, then slid the porthole open.

  A graying man was sitting on the floor, reciting something. From his straight hair, almond eyes, and patchy beard, I could tell he was a Silklander by blood. And what he was reciting shocked me: the names of the Twelve Chiefs of the Children. I’d seen this man before…in the Tower of Wisdom, behind a stack of books, wearing the tall, felt hat and metal clasp of the Philosophers. But why was a Silklander Philosopher here in the dungeon, the twelve hallowed names on his tongue?

  I joined his recitation, so he’d take notice. “Tala,” my grandfather, “Sayt,” my uncle and father-in-law, “Iban,” my husband, “Hafaz,” my son, “Zawad,” my grandson, “Kazin,” my great-grandson, and the final chief, who was only a boy when they strangled him.

  “You’re one of us,” he said, grinning. “Walking the straight path.” He put his finger to his lip. “Shh! You must not show them. You must hide it in your heart, lest you end up like me.”

  “Is that why they put you here?” I asked.

  He nodded. “I willingly carry these burdens — someone has to — but you and the others mustn’t. Stay safe — lie if you must — but keep their names in your heart, always. So long as truth lives in the hearts of us seekers, it will never perish, no matter what cruelties they devise to destroy it.”

  How wise. It was men like him I wished to save by restoring the righteous rule of the Children. Why must the good, the truthful, always suffer? Though he was likely ignorant of the true teachings of the Twelve Chiefs, he was trying his best, and that merited something.

  “Don’t fight,” he said, “always forgive. Always. Our reward will be in Paradise — theirs will be here. One day the truth will dawn. Until then, keep it in your heart, always, brother.”

  “What’s your name?”

  He put his hand to his heart. “I am Wafiq.”

  “Wafiq…is there something I can do to ease your burdens?”

  He shook his head. “Every day, Khizr Khaz or his Order men ask me ‘Who is Chisti?’ and when I say ‘father’ instead of ‘saint,’ they whip me. My back is not a pretty sight, dear brother. If you do anything to help me, they’ll hurt you too. Don’t let your faith be known, ever. Just know — there are many of us — thousands, tens of thousands — out there. You are not alone. Though it may be dim, there is always light. Knowing that is succor enough. Remember the saying of our beloved Father — ‘Carrying truth is like holding burning coals.’ Hold those coals in your heart, dear brother.”

  That was indeed a true saying of Father Chisti. My husband, especially, loved to repeat it. All books of the Twelve Chiefs had been burned, and I’d learned from my studies that the Sylgiz and other present-day followers of the Path of the Children had attributed fabricated sayings to the Children, so how did Wafiq know a true one? Was it just fortune that a few true sayings had survived in the six hundred years we’d been gone?

  Footsteps. Guards approached. I shut the porthole and made mopping motions before the cycle ended and I returned to the closet.

  I didn’t know what I needed in order to devise the perfect plan to restore the righteous rule of the Children, so I’d have to learn more. I couldn’t rest. Too many had suffered, still suffered, for carrying the truth. Just because I lived in a palace and could fill myself with delicacies and lie upon silk sheets didn’t give me the right to set down those coals, even for a moment.

  But soulshifting had its limits. For one, after soulshifting into a human, you couldn’t soulshift again until the sun set or rose. So I went to do something I’d neglected this morning — take a bath.

  Celene was there, sitting alone in the hot, corner pool. Other concubines were around, chittering among each other and going in and out of the cold and warm pools, as well as the steam rooms. Vera helped me off my chair, get undressed, and climb into the hot pool. The Crucian girl reminded me too much of myself when I first arrived — aloof — and the harem was difficult to endure alone.

  “You all right, dear?” I asked Celene in Sirmian.

  That broke her trance. Her cheeks turned from snow to pink as she folded her arms over her breasts. She’d learn soon enough, like I had, there was no preserving one’s shame in Kyars’ harem.

  Wrinkles covered the skin on her hands. How long had she been soaking? “I’m well enough. And are you better?”

  “Better every day, aside from this awful tragedy that’s befallen us.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.” Words said so dryly. “I heard he was…a good king.”

  According to what Sambal and Mirima had told me, Celene was the daughter of the Crucian imperator. She only spoke Sirmian because she’d been the Sirmian shah’s hostage. I only did because it was similar enough to one of the three languages spoken in the Vogras when I’d lived there, the others being Vograsian and Paramic.

  With her unblemished, baby-soft features, Celene seemed young even for this harem. Sixteen, according to Mirima. How clever could she be at her precious age? Although, some cleverness was surely required to escape from the Shah of Sirm. How careful would I have to be around her?

  “It’ll get better, dear,” I said. “The Alanyans aren’t savage like the Sirmians. They’ve got culture, here.” I’d heard so many Alanyans proudly spout that, though I had no idea if it were true. Sirmians weren’t loved in this country. I’d read they’d abolished titles like sultana and pasha after a janissary revolt decades ago, and so slaves were running the place, which seemed the trend here, too.

  “Everyone keeps saying that. As if it could ever be good, to be a hostage so far from everyone and everything I love.”

  A certain other hostage had grown to like it. Poor Cyra. I wasn’t sure I’d killed her, and it seemed the other witnesses couldn’t say if she were dead or alive. Either way, it had ended badly. She was likely buried in the sand or on her way to the Waste with the Sylgiz. I didn’t have the right to feel sorry for her, considering
what I’d done, and so tried not to think of her, lest it poison me with guilt.

  “Do you pray?” I dropped chamomile petals in the water, submerged my hair, and came back up. “There’s a lovely chapel in the city. I’ll take you there once I’m walking again. You could even meet the bishop of Alanya.”

  “I’ve never stopped praying and never will.”

  Faithful girl. Though her gods were powerless here, she carried those coals in her own way.

  “It would be nice,” she said, “to visit the chapel. The Sirmians would not let me. But…I can’t really blame them…after what happened.”

  “After the war with Crucis?”

  She shook her head. “Not just the war. The Archangel appeared in the sky, his wings broader than the clouds, his sword taller than a mountain. I saw him too, which is why I can never be unfaithful. I’m like the apostles, now. Faith is no longer a matter of believing, but of seeing. And so many others saw him. They rushed to take our faith, to be saved in the light of the Archangel, which is why Murad outlawed it entirely…with exile, torture, or imprisonment.”

  Kato had told me the story about the angel appearing in the sky over Kostany, but in his version, Lat had exploded it into a thousand thousand pieces, and the gholam had rejoiced. Either way, it was so fanciful. Perhaps it was sorcery of some sort. Whatever it was, Celene believed it, her voice solid with certainty. We were more similar than I thought. What the Sirmians were doing to the Ethosians, the Alanyans had done to our Path, despite all Latians worshipping the same god and revering the same man.

  “They won’t forbid you here.” I scrubbed my arms with a bar of rose-scented lye, then doused them. “There are even Ethosians in the Majlis. And Kyars doesn’t care what faith you keep. The girl wheeling me around — her name is Vera — I couldn’t even describe the god she prays to. It looks like…a pillar with faces and arms.”

  Celene giggled. Her smile truly was precious. “Yormagolgalghar — the Ruthenian dreaming god.”

  I laughed genuinely for the first time in ages. “I’m not even going to try pronouncing that.”

  We both laughed — a small relief in a tumultuous time.

  “They’re a stubborn bunch, Ruthenians,” Celene said. “My grandfather sent an army of missionaries up there. They ate half of them.”

  I don’t know why, but that sounded so funny. I couldn’t stop laughing, Celene joining me. Other concubines in the chamber stared.

  “Hush, dear,” I said. “Today is for mourning. If they see us laughing…”

  Celene nodded. “Yes, of course.” She paused, then took a deep breath, puffing her snowy cheeks. “May I…come see you, later?”

  Seemed I’d earned some trust with nothing but a casual and sincere chat. Good-nature and sincerity were rare in this harem, but what is a soulshifter if not an actor?

  I smiled as widely as I could. “I would love if you did.”

  The black drongo was hatching its eggs when I soulshifted the next day. What a tender warmth, as if your bottom was sitting in a soothing bath. The moment of the soulshift, I also felt her base instincts — a fierce drive to protect those eggs, from any and all, even at pain of death. Drongos were like humans in that way, and I could relate.

  I soared into the sky over Qandbajar until I found the training ground: a grassy field — about a thousand feet long and half as wide — littered with straw men. And those straw men were covered in arrows. I dove closer until I could see the Archers of the Eye shooting arrows with their recurve bows in long, almost magnetic arcs.

  With their coal-dark skin and white dresses that barely reached below their knees, the Archers were obviously not Alanyan. Next to the training field sat an Ethosian chapel with a white spire at its center — a distinct look to the western-style chapels in the Ethosian Quarter. And as I landed atop the spire and focused my earsight, I noticed them sitting on the floor, like us Latians. Their language seemed to share many words with Paramic, too…so many, in fact, that I shockingly understood everything they chanted.

  The Archers of the Eye hailed from Labash, a country to the south of Himyar, and were the most accurate and far-firing archers in the world. So why weren’t they off fighting battles? Why did the Seluqal House pay them heaps of gold to send messages? Because, as history had shown, words rang louder than war cries. And the right word, at the perfect time, could win a war — including, hopefully, the one I was fighting.

  Amid all these men going in and out of the chapel, in and out of the barrack, and onto and off the training field — all wearing white, knee-length dresses — I noticed someone out of place: a young woman with red hair. She sat in the grass, stringing a bow. I fluttered toward her, careful to avoid the arrows flying about. I absolutely did not want to die…again. I landed on the grass to stay low, then jumped my way toward her until I stood at her front.

  She smiled at me. I tilted my head at her, like I’d noticed birds doing to people. Lithe and pretty enough — amid so many men, she seemed like a morsel of halva surrounded by giant ants. Her long, loose, and fur-lined caftan resembled something the Sylgiz would wear — not a popular style in Alanya, for obvious reasons. By her wavy, dark red hair, I could surmise she was a Karmazi from the mountains to the west…but if that were so, why did she just hum a Sirmian song?

  Strange. But in any case, I couldn’t accomplish much at this training ground as a bird. I’d have to visit in person so I could place runes.

  “Agh!” the woman screamed. A droplet of blood flowed off her thumb and onto the grass. She’d cut herself with her knife while fletching an arrow. “Fuck! Am I so out of practice?” She looked at me with a smile warmer than the sun above. “Sorry, did I scare you?”

  An animal lover, too. I tilted my head to the other side.

  “Ugh, might as well call it a day. Take a bath. So many things I’ve been neglecting, all for this. No chance I’m going to win, anyway.”

  She got up and walked off the field. The young woman obviously wasn’t an Archer of the Eye, so what was she doing here? What was she trying to win?

  Her blood droplet glazed on the blade of grass, as if cream on a cake. I took a peck and stirred it on my tongue. What flavor would it be, I wondered? Seeker, sower, settler, or soldier?

  Hot on the tip of the tongue, fiery in the mouth, and burning down the throat.

  By Lat. I wanted more. It was nothing I’d ever tasted. It was something else entirely…one of the thirteen rare types. How lucky could I be to chance upon it like this?

  But what flavor? Not conqueror’s blood, which Cyra had, nor god’s blood, possessed by my son Seluq. I couldn’t tell because I’d no experience tasting anything else. I didn’t even know the names of many of the other eleven flavors.

  Stunned, I looked up at the sky, which to a bird was like looking down the street. I so wanted to soar and bathe in a cloud. I’d been alive a long time. Tasted the blood of thousands — nay, tens of thousands — and I’d never tasted a flavor like this.

  To figure it out, I needed the book that described and named the rarest flavors. I needed Flavors of Blood Volume Two.

  11

  Cyra

  I returned to the hospital for a bandage change. Requested a small mirror so I could look upon my scars before they put fresh bandages over them.

  Realizing I was barely the same person stung worse than a red-tailed scorpion. My eyeless socket seemed so dark and endless, as if an abyss. The surrounding swelling would lessen with time, but I’d never be whole. I’d never be beautiful.

  And then there was the swollen gash in my neck, accompanied by the bloodrunes Eshe had painted on my skin. A bunch of lines, though one resembled a tree, and another seemed like two triangles, and then, with copious imagination, one even looked like a man waving his arms. From what I remembered, he’d drawn them to stop the bleeding. Perhaps I could imagine they were henna…if blood were a dye color. Worse, no amount of scrubbing washed them off, as if as permanent as my scars.

  A relief to hav
e bandages on again. I wouldn’t have to see what I’d become and could imagine the same Cyra was behind those wrappings. I also wore a high-collared caftan to hide the wrappings. Too bad I was never good at lying to myself.

  News of the Shah’s murder arrived in Zelthuriya days ago. Sadly, few lamented. Tamaz had been a great patron here, helping to rebuild shrines, pave fresh roads, and dig new wells. But in his humility, he’d never made a show of it, and so now few here cared for his passing. Supplicants continued to go from shrine to shrine, chanting prayers, though few were for him.

  I prayed for him, though. When the sorcerer stabbed my eye, Tamaz rushed to save me. He could’ve ordered a gholam to do it. He could’ve secured his own safety. But his instincts took over. Only now did I realize how much he cared for me…how much he loved me…how much he wanted me to be the daughter he never had.

  Did he die believing I was hurting him? If there was one salve, it would be that he knew it wasn’t me, that I would never harm him, that I only wanted to be the best wife his son could have, the best daughter he could have. I was floating overhead when it happened and did not see his eyes…did not know what they recognized in his final moment.

  What would Kyars think? We’d known each other for eight years, and though he never liked me, would he really believe that I killed his father? Was anyone left who’d tell him otherwise? What’d happened to Hadrith, Ozar, and Sambal?

  Too many questions. Too few answers.

  On my way to see Kevah at Saint Chisti’s shrine, I ran into the two green turbans who’d carried me to the hospital. Their names were Rafa and Alir, I recalled.

  They were guarding a small shrine in the middle of the street. Rafa eyed me and moved his lips but let out no voice. All the while, Alir glared at him.

  “You must be fasting,” I said to them. “You don’t need to answer. I just wanted to say thank you for helping me.”