The Unconquered City

by K A Doore

  Illi half stood to get a better look. “What are they?”

  “A few introductory texts on jaan binding,” said Merrabel. “I thought you could use something to fill your time outside of our ongoing experiments. I won’t be able to be here every minute of the day. His Majesty may have absolved my court duties, but I still have an army to attend to and several delicate situations along our border to oversee. So we’d best be efficient, hmm?”

  Merrabel left the box and walked back around the desk. “We’ve proved that you can contain and quiet guul, but the stories claim the sajaam are capable of much more, including calling storms and changing the land itself.” At Illi’s look of concern, she laughed. “Don’t worry, I don’t intend to look into those claims just yet. The more we know about how sajaam are similar to jaan and guul, and how they differ, the more we can refine our methods. For instance, guul and jaan are both susceptible to the elements, but releasing the sajaami just to observe what happens would be foolish. That means we’re limited to poking and prodding and making deductions based on its reactions. For example, how many guards are outside the door?”

  Illi felt the sajaami start to reach as it had last night, but quickly drew it back in. Feigning ignorance, she said, “How should I know that?”

  “The sajaam were said to have controlled guul,” said Merrabel. “Let’s see if it has any affinity for jaan. Just—humor me.”

  Illi breathed deep, her gaze catching on the box of scrolls. Merrabel was holding up her end of the exchange. Illi could afford to give her a little in return. She let the sajaami reach. Immediately, her bracelets warmed. Like last night, the sajaami moved quickly, brushing past the door and across two spots of warmth just beyond.

  “Two,” said Illi.

  Merrabel’s smile sharpened. “What about in the whole palace?”

  Illi hesitated; she hadn’t even considered the possibility, but that would certainly be useful information to know. This time when she cast out, spreading the sajaami’s awareness beyond brick and stone and metal and wood, her bracelets became uncomfortably hot and her wrists started to pulse with pain. She kept a silent count as she brushed across each warm spot. Three … seven … twelve … But as she found room after room, it became harder for her to keep track of the numbers.

  The palace was large. Even though she couldn’t really see it, she felt as if she’d walked it herself. And it bustled with jaan, some still, some moving from room to room, some almost as fast as her. Then the spots blurred together, her bracelets as hot as coals. She tried to focus on one more, but it was too much. Her awareness snapped like a severed rope.

  The lab came back into focus. Illi blinked, her eyes scratchy and dry. The room spun lazily for a few heartbeats, her pulse too loud in her ears, before settling. Deep within her chest, the sajaami hummed.

  Illi put a hand on the bench nearby to steady herself. “I couldn’t get through the entire palace, but I stopped at one hundred and seventy-eight.”

  Merrabel made a noise of appreciation. She circled to the other side of her desk, leaned over it, and scribbled a few notes. When she straightened, she said, “With practice, I expect you can reach much further. For the record, there are currently two hundred and fourteen individuals in the palace, including guards, soldiers, servants, slaves, courtiers, healers, marab, and one king. You weren’t far off. Now, hold out your hand.”

  Merrabel took Illi’s hand between hers and examined it, turning it first one way, then the other. She pinched Illi’s skin, prodded the bones of her wrist, and bent her fingers back one by one. Then she drew a knife and slid the blade across Illi’s palm. Illi yelped and snapped her hand to her chest.

  “What in G-d’s names—?”

  “This has nothing to do with G-d,” said Merrabel distractedly, trying to snatch Illi’s hand back. “Hold still.”

  Illi hissed through her teeth, but let Merrabel have her bleeding hand. Merrabel held it, watching closely and counting under her breath as blood welled in the shallow cut and spilled free, rolling from Illi’s palm to her wrist and down her arm. It tickled, warm and wet, but Illi stayed still.

  Then, before the smell of blood could threaten to return her to the Siege, the cut began to heal, pulling itself back together in reverse. Merrabel took a sharp breath, her grip tightening until Illi thought Merrabel might crush her wrist. But there was no water nearby, no smear of blue, no evidence of healing magic. Just the plain fact of smooth skin where a cut had once been, and the blood that had leaked free, now crusted and dry. Her own mouth was as dry as dust and the room had begun to spin anew.

  Still holding Illi’s hand in her viselike grip, Merrabel steered Illi over to a table where a bowl of water waited. She wet a cloth and wiped Illi’s hand clean, then set the pink-stained cloth in a bowl of its own. With the blood gone, there was only a thin line to indicate that there’d been any cut at all, and this was easily overlooked among Illi’s other scars. Illi stared, turning her hand one way, then the other.

  “But none of my cuts healed like this on the sands,” she said, almost absently.

  “You were dehydrated,” said Merrabel.

  Illi turned Merrabel’s words over, trying to find meaning in them. Then horror filled her as she realized what Merrabel meant. Water was a necessary component in healing, but water could be found in more than just a skin. “I used my own blood—?”

  “Lacking another source of water, of course,” said Merrabel. “It’s inadvisable in most cases, since using blood to heal instead of water can create an unwanted link between healer and wounded, but if it’s yourself…” Merrabel shrugged, then held the bowl of water out to Illi. “Here. You’ll want to replace what you used.”

  Illi took the bowl but didn’t drink from it. Instead she tried to feel for the pulse of the water, as she had on the sands and as she had in her room, covered in cuts and bleeding from the destruction of Heru’s lab. But again, all she felt was her own pulse.

  “Then why can’t I heal when I want to?”

  “That water is for drinking, girl.” Merrabel glared at her until Illi took a long sip. Then she said, “To point out the obvious, you are wearing bracelets that were specifically made to restrain power, but they don’t appear to stop you from healing yourself.”

  “But I’ve never been able to heal like that before,” said Illi. “Never that fast.” She finished the water and set the empty bowl on the table. “I’m not a natural healer, only trained to do the bare minimum: stop bleeding, speed up some healing.”

  “Hmm.” Merrabel considered Illi for a moment, then went to her desk and riffled through her papers. She found a blank one and began writing. “That’s exactly the kind of information I was hoping to observe. Sajaam have on occasion been linked to healing, but never in so direct a way.”

  “Essif was a healer,” said Illi. “But she helped bind the sajaam.”

  Merrabel paused in her writing and looked up. “I’m sorry—what?”

  “The story of the sajaam’s binding. You know it, right?”

  “Of course I do.” Merrabel frowned in irritation. “But there was no mention of a healer.”

  Illi mirrored Merrabel’s frown. “We must be talking about different stories, then. Everyone learns the story of the first healer. Essif’s faith led her to bind the sajaam and she was rewarded by G-d with the ability to heal.”

  Merrabel snorted. “That’s ridiculous. En-marab bound the sajaam.”

  “They helped. But it was Essif who knew what to do.”

  This time Merrabel actually scoffed. “A healer knew how to bind sajaam? The en-marab used blood and fire and thorns. Do those sound like healer tools to you?”

  “No,” admitted Illi. “But … there were signs from G-d. That’s how she knew to use them.”

  “What makes more sense,” said Merrabel carefully, leaning toward Illi, her too-bright eyes fixed on hers, “that a number of capable and well-trained en-marab bound the sajaam to stone in the Wastes, or that an untrained healer
heard voices and knew exactly what to do?”

  When Merrabel put it that way, it did sound absurd. “Essif was a real person,” insisted Illi, but she didn’t know if she was trying to convince Merrabel or herself.

  “The names of real people get tied to unrelated events all the time.” Merrabel shook her head and then picked up her pen, filling the lab with the sound of its tip scritch-scritching across paper.

  Illi turned her freshly healed hand over, letting the light pick out her thin scar. Is that true? she asked the sajaami. But she only got smug silence in return.

  She clenched her hand in frustration. “Why can’t we just bind the sajaami to stone again?”

  Merrabel sighed and set her pen down. “Rebinding the sajaami might help, but unfortunately it won’t undo what its release disrupted. Besides, making such a long and arduous trek would be a needless waste of time and energy, especially considering the sajaami was already released once before. No, we’ll need to destroy it to stop the Wastes from spreading and return balance to the sands and the sea. Destroy it, or find a way to harness its energy for our own use.”

  There it is. This time, Illi wasn’t sure if it was her own thought or the sajaami’s. Still, it didn’t bother her that Merrabel wanted to do more than just destroy the sajaami. Illi had suspected as much since they entered the city. At least Merrabel wanted to do something.

  “We’ll destroy it,” said Illi firmly.

  Merrabel ignored her and stood, pulling on fresh gloves. “All right. I believe that’s it for the day. I must attend to other urgent matters. You have your reading and a servant will bring food by again. Feel free to make use of my writing equipment if you must take notes.”

  Illi started. “You haven’t been here hardly an hour,” she protested. “Surely there are other experiments you could run. Or the story of the sajaam’s binding—it could hold clues to how we might destroy it.”

  “That’s what you can do, then,” said Merrabel, already at the door. “Write down your people’s myth and I’ll add it to my collection in the morning. You can write as well as read, yes?”

  Illi bristled. “Of course—”

  “There you go. That should keep you busy while I continue to hold the entirety of Hathage together.” Merrabel opened the door and stepped through, pausing long enough to offer Illi a thin-lipped smile. “Don’t try to leave again.”

  The click of the lock echoed long after Merrabel had left. Illi stood for a while in the center of the lab, breathing in through her mouth and out through her nose to quench the anger that had flared. Then her gaze lit on the box of scrolls Merrabel had left her, and that anger turned to grudging gratitude. Heru had never once tried to teach her, yet Merrabel was willing to gift her a literal boxful of information.

  Illi slid into Merrabel’s chair and sifted through the bits of vellum and papyrus until she found one that had been neatly scraped clean. Merrabel might have dismissed the story of the healer Essif and the sajaam as a mere myth, but it was true. It had to be true. Maybe once Merrabel read her version, she’d know it, too.

  Centuries ago, when the sajaam had been terrorizing the world of men, a single healer named Essif had gathered all the marab of all the tribes together to stop them. G-d had given Essif the tools she’d needed to subdue the sajaam: thorns to protect her from the sajaam, fire to keep back their guul, and blood to bind them to stone. The marab had helped her, writing the names of G-d and forming a seal to keep the sajaam in.

  Illi reread what she’d written; the story looked so simple when shaped into letters and words, instead of spoken aloud. But there had to be something here, had to be—

  You are wrong.

  Illi set her pen down. “Yeah? Then why don’t you tell me what happened?”

  And potentially hand you the keys to my own destruction? The sajaami sounded affronted, yet somehow still smug.

  “I don’t know if that’s in here,” admitted Illi. “But if a healer could figure this out, then surely I can.”

  Essif was no healer.

  “Of course she was, she was the first healer. I mean, I guess according to this she wasn’t a healer until after, but still.” G-d had supposedly given Essif the ability in return for her devotion and sealing the sajaam, but that part had always felt a little off to Illi. That part required she still believe in G-d.

  Essif was no healer, repeated the sajaami. She took that from us.

  Illi’s breath caught. She opened her fist and stared at the scar on her palm, or what was left of it. “Sajaam can heal?”

  We can do a great many things. Essif was greedy and broke off just a piece of us for herself. But even a piece is powerful enough to cross generations.

  Illi was only half listening as she pulled open the drawers of Merrabel’s desk, searching for a knife. Finally she found a small one for sharpening the point of a pen. She didn’t hesitate before pressing it deep into her palm and splitting the skin. She sucked in a breath as she watched the flesh come together before her eyes again. The dizziness that followed was like a gentle breeze, easy to ignore.

  The thirst was harder to ignore. Thankfully, Merrabel had left her an entire pitcher of water. Illi broke her skin again, deeper now, and this time blood welled free from the cut before it could heal. The room spun and she thought she smelled smoke, but she tightened her grip on the edge of the desk and remained there. Under her breath, she muttered words she’d heard Heru say while binding guul and jaan, but nothing happened.

  Of course not; the sajaami was already bound to her.

  What are you trying to accomplish? The sajaami sounded amused.

  Illi cleaned off the blade and put it back in the drawer. She took a long drink of water, but it didn’t ease the swirling in her head. When she stood, the room pitched momentarily into darkness before settling once more. She sat back down.

  “Let’s practice something else for now,” she said to the empty room.

  And she began to count the guards in the palace again.

  19

  The days in the lab blurred together. Illi marked the time by the click of the lock that signaled Merrabel’s arrival in the morning and the click of the lock as she left.

  Some days, Merrabel arrived with breakfast and left well after the servant had brought dinner for them both.

  Some days, Illi had enough hours of daylight to go through all of the scrolls in the box as well as the notes Merrabel had left out on her desk. She was even beginning to understand some of them.

  Merrabel had been right about the scrolls being in Illi’s language, but even though Illi recognized the individual words, together they made little sense. The text reminded her of the few times Heru had spoken at length about his work: dry, rambling, and convoluted. Now, at least, she knew where he’d learned how to speak like that.

  To think that he and Merrabel had actually studied together. It was difficult enough to picture Heru as an advisory marabi to the Empress, with all the power and facilities that must have entailed. Imagining his life before that, before he’d become an expert on jaan, a student who hadn’t known much more than Illi—that was all but impossible.

  Some days, Illi only had the evening to practice her burgeoning understanding of en-marabi science. Letting the sajaami reach one night, she’d quickly discovered that Merrabel had doubled the guard in the hall. The guards were only the thickness of a door away, yet that distance made many of the bindings she wanted to test ineffective. According to the scrolls, her own blood was only half of the connection; she needed theirs as well. But there were other ways to affect the guards’ jaan than just binding them.

  So she slid the knife across her palm and squeezed her hand until the blood rolled between her fingers and each time the scent of smoke and the distant punch of screams was a little weaker. She muttered the words she’d read in Merrabel’s scrolls—half that she recognized from Heru, half that were completely new to her—and pointed at where the guard’s heart would be if the door weren’t in the way. The
first few times, she felt nothing. She almost slipped and used the sajaami instead, to its delight, but the heat of her bracelets warned her in time.

  Then one night, after Merrabel had taxed her control longer and harder than usual, Illi muttered and bled and pointed and something shifted. Illi could almost see the line between her and the guard, frail as a spider’s web and taut as a loaded bridge wire. She tugged. On the other side of the door, someone cursed.

  Illi’s smile was triumphant. And then her wrists flared with white-hot heat, and dizziness crashed over her, sending her to the floor. By the time the bracelets had cooled and her ears had stopped singing, whatever tenuous connection she’d created was long gone.

  But this cut on her palm didn’t heal like the others. A silver scar ran through the lines of her palm, cutting them all short. The sight was strangely reassuring. She’d wondered at the hundreds of silver scars lacing Heru’s arms and hands, why someone as vain as he hadn’t asked a healer for help with those, why he hadn’t used a sharper knife. But now, at last, she had an answer: the scars were tied to each connection, even the failed ones.

  Too bad it wasn’t the answer she was looking for.

  The next time Merrabel visited, she noticed the new scar immediately. Illi had just enough time to add a mark to her tally on one of the sheets of paper—the eighth of its kind—before the general took Illi’s hand between her own gloved ones. She prodded the line of flesh, then tightened her grip and met Illi’s gaze.

  “Why do you insist on meddling with this when you can do so much more?”

  Illi stared back. “I’ll do whatever it takes to destroy the sajaami. Will you?”

  Merrabel sighed and looked away. “Of course.”

  Then she’d drilled Illi on different types of bindings before testing and retesting her ability to feel the presence of jaan. By the time daylight thickened with evening, Illi was more than just physically exhausted. Her head was stuffed with cobwebs and her ears whined with a persistent ringing. For the first time since she’d arrived in Hathage, Illi was glad when Merrabel declared her day done early and left.