The Impossible Contract

by K A Doore

  “That’s reassuring,” said Heru. “Now if you’ll just let us go on our way, we’ll stop interfering with your plan.”

  “Heru,” hissed Mo.

  “She’s not going to let us go,” said Thana.

  “The assassin is correct,” chorused the bound.

  “No.” Heru snapped his eye open, all traces of resignation gone. He pressed his lips together and took a grating breath. “You will let us go, because I refuse to die without first integrating all that I’ve learned here into my own research. Besides, you cannot attack us, your Imperial Highness, not without disrupting your seal. Any moment the sajaami will break free and if your seal is not intact, you’ll be unable to capture it.” Heru began rolling back one of his sleeves. “So you’d better let us go if you don’t want to lose your sajaami.”

  “That’s not an option,” said the Empress. “We have more than enough bound to share. We built redundancies into this system. We have you to thank for that; you suggested it in your notes.”

  The bound nearest them unfroze and lunged for Heru. Thana didn’t think; she stepped in front of Heru and kicked the first out of the way, then whipped her garrote across the other’s face. Mo sank between them, hiding from the onslaught. Thana didn’t expect her to fight after what she’d already been through. Besides, the Empress had taken her staff. That was all right; the bound would have to kill her to get to Mo, and Thana wasn’t about to make that easy.

  “Go on, Heru!” Thana elbowed a third and ducked the swipe of a fourth. “I can distract them!”

  Heru nodded. While Thana whirled around him, taking out one bound at the knees and sending another stumbling back with a kick to the chest, Heru drew a circle. Thana’s next punch landed on a bound’s temple and she was rewarded with a satisfying crack. She moved with a liquid smoothness, all her fear abandoned at the base of the pillar. After all, what did she have left to fear?

  Then she turned, bringing her arm back for another punch, and hesitated. She recognized the bound charging at her. He was the blacksmith’s apprentice. And the person dragging their foot just behind him was their neighborhood’s gearworker. The woman coming at her from the side had always stood outside her front door with a pipe and a ready smile.

  In her distraction, the blacksmith’s apprentice slammed into her, ripping the garrote from her hand, his fingers like claws around her throat. Thana scratched at his eyes, but of course that did nothing. Her own neighbors were trying to kill her. No—not neighbors anymore. The Empress had seen to that.

  Thana growled, grabbed the bound’s wrists, and twisted until its grip broke. Her foot connected with his sternum and he went sprawling. Breathing heavily, Thana reset her stance as another barreled at her. But before it could reach her, the ground heaved. The bound stumbled and then collapsed as if their muscles had dissolved.

  Heru held his arms up, blood rolling down to his elbows, his face even paler than usual. His whole body shuddered. He sank to his knees. Mo ran to him, reaching for a waterskin at her belt that wasn’t there.

  Behind her, toward the center of the camp, the darkness that had poured out of the pillar had coalesced. Now it seethed and pulsed and tossed sparks around the camp. The darkness broke and split and in the space between formed two eyes and the thin line of a mouth. Those eyes narrowed at the sand below, where a figure in blue stood with upraised arms.

  “Who has freed Nejm?”

  The voice was the roar of wind across the sands before a storm, the crash of thunder through a deluge, the rumble of a mountain moving. It reverberated through Thana’s bones, and it was all she could do to keep from falling to her knees.

  “The Empress Zara ha Khatet of the immortal Mehewret Empire,” answered the Empress through the mouths of every one of her thousands of bound. “You are in our debt—and bound within our seal, sajaami Nejm. Don’t waste your energy trying to—”

  “You dare seal Nejm?” boomed the voice, the darkness flaring first red, then bone white. “Nejm, who is so powerful G-d themself had to seal us away? Nejm, who even a hundred marab could not defeat? Nejm, who has ruled the Wastes for thousands of years and will rule for thousands more? Insignificant mortal, you cannot comprehend the power of the sajaam. We have watched your empires be born and die. This seal will not hold us.”

  As the sajaami spoke, its form swelled and spread until the turquoise sky was engulfed in its darkness. The burgeoning sunrise was night once more and the only available light bled from the fire around the camp’s periphery.

  Thana touched her waist, counted: two glass charms remained. By the way one was vibrating, she was about to be down to one. Soon, she’d have no protection at all. But then, Salid had never intended his charms to go up against the strength of a sajaami.

  “No,” said the Empress. “You underestimate the strength of this seal. Or have you seen one of this make before?”

  Mo reached Heru and grabbed his still bleeding arm. He didn’t resist, only slumped further toward the ground. Mo searched her immediate area, lips pursed, and caught Thana’s gaze. “I need water. He’s badly hurt.”

  “I … have not,” admitted the sajaami. “But no mortal seal is a match for my strength.”

  “I am no mere mortal.”

  Thana cast around, but the only things nearby were the motionless bound. The wind kicked sand into the air and screeched past, its voice deep and raw. No, that wasn’t just the wind. The sajaami was screaming.

  The Empress was still speaking, but her words were a mere murmur beneath the sajaami’s storm. The few guttural, clipped words Thana picked out from the noise slipped across her mind, unattainably foreign. They sounded exactly how Thana imagined the marks across the backs of the bound would if they were ever uttered.

  With a single, abrupt movement, the bound took a step inward, then another. Step by step, they tightened the seal and closed in on the camp’s center and on the Empress standing there, arms open and head thrown back. Fire split the sky in a sudden arc, but this was no lightning. Another arc struck the Empress, wiping her and her guards from sight in a blinding blast of light. But when Thana’s vision cleared, the Empress still stood, arms outstretched. The guards around her were gone.

  “How dare you!” seethed Nejm.

  The darkness surged westward across the camp. But when it came to the camp’s fiery edge, it spilled to either side, unable to go any further. Nejm gathered itself again and this time surged east, only to meet a similar fate. The sajaami flew from side to side like a bird trapped in a cage, but no matter how much it raged and roiled, it couldn’t venture beyond the edge of the seal.

  All at once, Nejm coiled tight in the seal’s center, then dove straight down at the Empress like a hawk after its prey. It sliced through the air, trailing darkness and whorls of fire in its wake, claws and teeth and eyes forming and reforming at its head. The Empress didn’t flinch, but opened her arms even wider.

  The sajaami collided with her and both vanished in a blast of roiling darkness. The ground shook, sending a jolt through Thana’s bones as severe as if she’d been thrown from a window two stories up. Heru stumbled, but Mo caught him before he could fall. The bound scattered and toppled like stones. Gouts of sand and dust exploded into the air, obscuring the sky with haze. The sun crested the horizon and its light suffused the haze, filling it with a bloody glow.

  Silence fell like a heavy blanket across the camp and just as smothering. Thana’s pulse beat louder than drums in her ears. A hand touched her arm. Mo stood nearby, Heru leaning heavily against her.

  “Is she dead?”

  A dry cough answered and a heartbeat later was echoed throughout the camp. Mo’s hand squeezed Thana’s arm as dread squeezed her throat. A deeper cough, then a long stretch of silence. Thana freed the dagger strapped to her thigh—her last blade—and fingered its hilt. Finally, when she couldn’t stand the silence any longer, she started forward. If the Empress wasn’t dead, then Thana could catch her while she was still weak.

  But Mo
refused to let go. “Thana, no!”

  A dry rasping scraped across the sands from all sides, queerly hitched and all wrong. The hairs on Thana’s arms stood up as goose bumps prickled her flesh. All at once, she realized the rasping was a soft laugh. The Empress was laughing.

  A form condensed in the haze. It approached them, the laughter scratching from its throat. The haze peeled away, revealing the Empress, her blue wrap torn and smeared with blood, but she was otherwise whole. Alive.

  “It worked.” Her eyes were bright, her grin wild. “We did it. After all these years, all that planning, finally, finally. Look at us!” She gestured at herself with a childlike glee. “You should be proud of us, Sametket—we managed something you’ve only ever dreamed of. All those years you spent on your research and experiments and work, and for what? Nothing but dust and defeat. Does it pain you that we accomplished what you could not? We hope so—you were always such an insufferable little snot. But you were useful in your own way. Out of all our marab, your research proved most invaluable, you kept our people’s ire off us with your antics, and you refused to see what was happening all around you.”

  Mo moved closer to Thana, her whole body trembling. Heru let go of Mo and straightened, but he was still shaking. Blood trickled down his arms, unwilling to clot.

  “I congratulate you on your accomplishment, your Imperial Highness,” said Heru through gritted teeth. “But now you have no need for us. If you’ll just step aside so we can find our camels—”

  “You may address us as ‘your Holiness and Highest,’ for there’s now nothing between us and G-d,” said the Empress. She stopped a couple dozen feet away from them. “And you’re correct—as individuals, we have no need for you anymore.”

  The sand stirred as every single bound turned and began to shuffle toward them. Thana could feel the stares of a thousand pairs of dead eyes on her, each as heavy as a brick. Her dagger might as well have been a toothpick.

  “Instead, you will join our army.”

  31

  The bound charged. Before Thana could turn, run, or do anything, cold fingers wrapped around her chest and yanked. She stumbled forward with a cry. The second to last glass charm blazed hot and let out a thin whine. When the fingers tugged again, the charm shattered, raining hot shards of glass down her hip and thighs.

  “Stay in the circle!” snapped Heru.

  Mo grabbed Thana’s shoulders and pulled her back just as Heru finished drawing a circle in the sand around them with his sandal. Then he stood in its center, rolling up his blood-stained sleeves, his breathing ragged and sharp.

  “Come here, little sand flea,” sang the Empress. “We took your jaani once before. We don’t know how you restored it, but you belong to us now.”

  Mo’s grip on Thana’s arm tightened. “What’s she mean?”

  “After she sent both you and Heru away, she tried to remove my jaani,” said Thana. “But she didn’t know about the guuli. She removed that instead.”

  “An amateur mistake,” scoffed Heru, although his breathlessness leached away some of his scorn. “Any who has studied jaan as long as I would have noticed that there were two jaan within Thana. My initial suspicion of the Empress’s intent was well-founded.”

  “Is that why you didn’t mention the guuli?” asked Thana.

  “The Empress’s appearance in the Wastes at the base of the very thing we sought was simply too fortuitous,” said Heru. “Life is never that simple.”

  “So why didn’t you say anything sooner?” pressed Thana.

  “I wanted to see what she would do,” said Heru. “If I had played my hand too soon, she would have slit both of our throats. Unfortunately, it appears that her thwarted attempt to take your jaani created a link between you two, which the former Empress will try to exploit. So would you please stay within the circle.”

  Thana nodded, mute. The tug came again, but Mo held her tight and kept her from leaving the circle. Just beyond the thin line, the bound swarmed dense as flies after season’s end. They were completely surrounded.

  Heru found the strength to draw his knife across his arms a third time. Blood fell, quick and profuse, staining his wrap and the sand. Heru swayed, his skin losing all color even as Thana watched, but his feet were planted wide and his lips pressed together with fierce determination and somehow he remained standing.

  One of Mo’s hands entwined with Thana’s and she pressed both to Thana’s chest. Mo’s heartbeat pulsed against her back, reassuring and strong.

  “I’m sorry.” Mo’s whisper tickled Thana’s ear. “I shouldn’t have gone with Semma. I should have seen what she was so much sooner. And I shouldn’t have judged you for your past.”

  Thana squeezed Mo’s hands. “She would have tried to kill you, too, if you’d stayed.”

  “She’s going to kill us now.”

  “No,” said Thana, realizing as the word passed her lips that she meant it. “We’re going to stop her.”

  Heru barked out a single, incomprehensible word. Then his will burst from him and rushed across the circle, tackling the bound. Men and women and children all with dead eyes collapsed midstride like so many empty skins. The ground shuddered as they fell and silence rushed into the void.

  Heru dropped his arms, nodded to himself, then fell to his knees and crumpled forward, face-first into the sand.

  “Impressive,” said the Empress. “But that little trick won’t work on us.”

  Mo squeezed Thana’s hand before breaking away and going to Heru’s crumpled body. She laid two fingers against his neck, then pried the knife from his fingers and began rolling up her own sleeves.

  Thana tilted her head back to meet the Empress’s gaze. Whatever she did, it had to buy Mo enough time to heal Heru. Only an en-marabi could undo those terrible marks and sever the Empress’s jaani once and for all. Heru had been right; an assassin wasn’t much use against the horrors of a sajaami and an immortal Empress. But if a distraction was what Mo needed, then she could be that distraction. Thana would be anything, as long as Mo lived.

  Thana stepped out of Heru’s circle. Immediately, the last charm burned hot, but it didn’t shatter. Not yet. The Empress widened her arms as if welcoming Thana into an embrace.

  “Ah, our little assassin,” she said. “You thought a simple poison would stop us. We didn’t appreciate the inconvenience.” She made as if to pluck a string out of the air before her, and Thana felt something sharp deep inside her chest. “You shouldn’t be alive. We pulled your jaani out ourselves and we haven’t made an error with that procedure in years. However you survived, it’s clear that our mutual friend lied to us when he checked you earlier. Perhaps he learned something after all.”

  Thana only half listened to the Empress’s spill of words. She weighed her last knife in her hand, then sighted along the blade. The dagger was much bigger than her throwing knives, but not so big that the shot would be impossible.

  The Empress’s fingers played through the air as if tying stringwork. The tugs strengthened. Thana stumbled once before spreading her feet and bracing herself. The tugs had their own predictable pulse. Thana counted, breathed deep, and between one and the next—threw.

  The dagger struck the Empress in the throat. She jerked back, hands going to her neck. The tugging stopped. Thana rushed her. She’d pull the knife out herself and sever the Empress’s head while she was still weak. Even with her jaani bound, she couldn’t survive that—

  The Empress plucked the dagger from her neck. Blood sprayed in one short burst, then slowed to a trickle and stopped. The Empress traced the wound in her neck as it knit back together. Before Thana had run a dozen feet, only a streak of blood marked where her dagger had hit. Thana slid to a stop.

  The Empress’s lips quirked up. Before Thana could react, she’d thrown the dagger. It was a clumsy throw, but Thana felt the impact in her thigh. Her leg gave out and she fell with a cry to her knees. Pain followed, sweeping through her bright and furious like a flash flood.


  The Empress stalked toward her. Thana’s fingers slipped around the knife in her thigh, now her only weapon. But she hesitated. She didn’t know the extent of the damage and if she pulled it free, she could bleed out. On the other hand, if she didn’t, soon there’d be nothing between the Empress and Mo. She had to give Mo more time. Thana gritted her teeth and yanked the knife out.

  Blood pulsed down her leg. When she first attempted to stand, her leg buckled and she hit the sand hard. Thana rode out the wave of dizziness, then removed her tagel and tied it around her leg, just above the wound. This time when she stood, her leg shook but held. The blood had slowed.

  The Empress swept her fingers through the air as she drew close. Thana braced for another pull. But no pull came—instead, the Empress lunged and yanked the dagger out of Thana’s blood-slicked grip. She followed up by sending her elbow into Thana’s throat.

  Surprised, Thana’s hands flew up and she stumbled back. The Empress stepped in close and Thana felt pressure against her stomach, in her stomach. The Empress twisted the knife.

  No. The thought echoed through Thana’s head as she fell back onto the sand. The sun was over the horizon now, its light transforming the Empress into a silhouette as the woman dug her knee into Thana’s chest and wrapped cold fingers around her throat. Not like this.

  “Thana!” Mo’s cry came from far away, barely cutting through the ringing in her ears.

  The Empress grabbed Thana by the hair and slammed her head against the ground. Dark spots burst in Thana’s vision. She scrabbled at the Empress’s sides, but her aim was off, her fingers weak. All she wanted to do was curl around the pain screaming in her gut.

  “You should have stayed down, little assassin,” said the Empress. “You should have finished your contract and never left your city. We tried to help you. We sent those bound to kill Heru for you. You should have let them. This could have been avoided.” She slammed Thana’s head down again for emphasis.