by K A Doore
He slipped into his room and closed the door with a sigh. He only had eyes for his bed, a comforting mess of thin blankets under the window. But that would have to wait.
He turned to the corner next to the door. “You’re fast.”
Menna stepped out of the shadows, a smirk firmly in place. “You’re slow. Now we’re gonna have to push it.” She started toward the window.
“Wait—where are we going?”
“Practice,” said Menna without turning. “We gotta stay sharp somehow.”
“Why? There’s nothing to stay sharp for.”
Menna paused next to the window, one hand on the sill. “The drum chiefs could lift the ban at any time. We have to be ready. That means we keep practicing, keep our knives sharp.”
When Amastan still hesitated, Menna huffed and turned back around. “What is it, ’Stan?”
Amastan swallowed. “Aren’t you—you’re not even a little relieved?”
“Relieved?” Menna frowned. “Why? Disappointed, yes. Upset—maybe. Okay, yes. G-d, why wouldn’t I be? I’ve only wanted to be an assassin my entire life, ’Stan. I was going to be more than just another marabi. I was going to be special. Shards, I am special. I will be more than this.” She pushed out a breath as if trying to push away the topic and abruptly turned back to the window.
“Come on.”
She threw open the window and climbed out. She stood on the ledge outside and for a moment, all Amastan saw were her shins—one with sleek new skin—and bare feet. Then she disappeared from view as she climbed. Amastan redid one of the knots in his wrap a little higher before following. He caught up to her on the roof.
Menna scanned the roofline. “Where are they?”
“What—they’re meeting here?” An edge of panic shot through him. “We should never practice near where one of us lives.”
“You worry too much, ’Stan. Of course we’re not going to practice here. Ho—Dihya!” Menna waved her arms at one of the rooftops.
A head popped up in response, then a body rolled over and stood. Dihya dropped a board between the two roofs and came across, her ax balanced on one shoulder. She was all grins.
“Took you long enough,” said Dihya. “I’ve been waiting there for an hour, at least.”
“Wasting your time,” said Menna, still turning.
A thump and a grunt was their only warning. Metal shnnged against stone and a machete trembled, blade buried in the rooftop at the center of the three. Amastan turned to find Azulay sauntering toward them. Menna sighed and yanked the machete free. She hooked it onto her belt.
“Hey, that’s mine,” said Azulay as he reached them.
“Is it?” Menna widened her eyes. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I thought it just grew here.”
Azulay shifted from foot to foot, but when Menna didn’t move to hand over his machete, he held out his hand. “You gonna give it back or what?”
“Nah.” Menna put her palm on its hilt. “I’ve always wanted a machete.”
“Oh come on, don’t make me fight you,” said Azulay.
Menna grinned. “Try it and see.”
“Is this what you meant by practice?” asked Dihya, one eyebrow raised and her thick arms crossed. “Bickering?”
“What’s even the point,” grumbled Azulay. “There aren’t any contracts. I can’t believe she lied to us all that time.”
“She didn’t lie,” pointed out Dihya. “She just didn’t … tell the truth.”
Azulay snorted. “Right. And now what? I was going to live off the copious contract money for the rest of my life. Now I have to earn baats?”
“No, now you have to actually get good at gambling,” said Menna.
“You can laugh,” said Azulay. “You’re already trained as a marabi. You,” he pointed at Dihya, “got your family’s metal work. And ’Stan here writes scrolls all day, even if I can’t understand what use that is.” He spread his hands. “I’ve got nothing.”
“You better marry rich, then,” said Menna.
“I just—I wish she’d told us sooner, is all.”
Menna stepped forward and clapped him on the back. “I’m sure Dihya would take you as an apprentice if you just asked her, Az’.”
Azulay rolled his eyes and shook his head and then ducked his shoulder to slip his machete free. Or at least he tried to. Menna’s hand caught his wrist before he could draw the machete from her belt.
“Let’s pair off tonight,” said Menna, her gaze locked on Azulay and her fingers tight around his wrist. “We’ll spar. Dihya and Amastan, me and Azulay.” She showed all of her teeth in a wide grin. “Winner gets Az’s machete.”
“Hey!” protested Azulay.
“I’m not sure this is what Tamella meant when she told us to practice,” said Amastan. “We should be honing other skills, not fighting each other. A mark won’t fight like us.”
But Menna ignored him and spun away, Azulay’s machete held before her. She waved it at him, taunting. “Come on!”
Amastan didn’t have a chance to object further. Dihya barreled into him, using her weight to throw him down and pin him to the roof. She smirked, one hand on either side of his head, a knee in his stomach. Her breath smelled like cloves and stale meat.
“You’re the one who always wants to be prepared for everything,” said Dihya. “Maybe someday you’ll need to fight us. Better be prepared to lose.”
Amastan drew up his knees and kicked. His foot met Dihya’s stomach, hard as stone. But Dihya let out an oof of breath and then Amastan was sliding out from under her, rolling to his feet, and running. He couldn’t match Dihya for strength, not for long, but he could match her for stamina. Let her try to catch him.
The four of them spread across the rooftops, chasing each other over the city as they sparred. After fighting both Dihya and Azulay, and managing to pin both, Amastan faced off against Menna. She eyed him from across the roof, one hand holding Dihya’s ax and the other holding Azulay’s machete. Amastan spread his empty hands. Menna grinned and barreled headlong at him.
Amastan waited until the last moment, then he stepped neatly out of the way, bringing his hand up as Menna passed and chopping with his fingers across the side of her neck. Menna took two, then four more steps before stumbling and falling. The weapons fell from her fingers, clattering to the stones as she threw her hands out to catch herself. She shook her head, disoriented. Amastan advanced.
But before he could attack, Menna stood and whistled a shrill note that cracked across the roof and halted the other two in their tracks.
“That’s enough for tonight,” she announced.
Amastan blinked and checked the sky. The stars spelled midnight, which meant they’d been sparring for several hours. All at once, exhaustion crashed into him like a heavy cart. He couldn’t wait to get home. A quick glance around told him that he was still several neighborhoods away, though.
“We’ll practice again in two nights’ time,” said Menna. She held out the weapons she’d taken. Dihya and Azulay snatched them back. “Next time, ’Stan gets to pick what we practice.”
“No stringwork,” said Azulay.
Amastan scowled. Dihya waved with her ax, then swung over the edge of the roof and out of sight. Out of the four of them, she preferred to take the streets instead of the rooftops.
“Maybe it won’t be so bad without contracts if we can keep practicing.” Azulay shrugged. “Too bad about the baats, though.”
Without waiting for a response, he sauntered away, humming an iluk drinking song to himself. Menna wiped her face, but only ended up smearing some of the dirt and sweat around. She met Amastan’s gaze with a smile.
“Come on,” she said. “I’ll race you.”
“I’m not really—”
But Menna was already off running. He watched her go, darting like a mouse to the edge of the roof. Without any hesitation, she jumped, sailing across the space between the roofs and landing soundlessly on the other side. She whirled and gestured to him to hu
rry up. Aware of each and every aching muscle, Amastan followed at a much slower pace.
He paused at the edge of the roof, not quite ready or willing to jump. Maybe he should follow Dihya’s lead and climb down to the streets, let Menna go ahead. He scanned the roof he was standing on, looking for anything that’d make his way easier. At first, he didn’t notice the sandal.
When he registered it, he’d already walked past it and was reaching for a wooden board leaning against the side of the glasshouse. He paused, almost didn’t turn back, but curiosity got the best of him. Someone must have left their sandal behind by accident. He and his cousins weren’t the only ones who used the rooftops.
The sandal peeked out from between two large crates, its leather so new it was still uncracked from use. A fine layer of sand dusted its top, at least several days’ worth. A fact that wouldn’t normally have sent alarm surging through Amastan.
Except the sandal was still attached to its wearer.
4
An icy chill spilled through Amastan. The wind had picked up, warm across the sweat now prickling the back of his neck. He inched forward, following the sandal and its foot to a leg, then the leg to a spill of malachite-green cloth.
Menna’s voice cracked through the air. “Stop dawdling.”
Amastan jumped, but he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the cloth. Its brightness fixed him in place, but also kept the certainty—and fear—away for another precious moment. Sand deceives, he told himself. But he knew in his gut that he was right, that this sandal and its foot and its leg and its cloth had lain here for too long, undisturbed. Unattended. Unquieted.
Five to six hours, Menna had said. It must have been days.
He hastily backed away.
“Amastan!”
Menna’s voice was too close. A heartbeat later, she slammed into him. No, not slammed—shoved. Menna had shoved him hard with both hands. Now she looked up at him with no small amount of concern.
“Shards, ’Stan—speak to me!”
But Amastan couldn’t speak, not yet. Even with his head turned and eyes averted, all he could see was the body.
Days … that much sand only accumulated after several days, but it could have been longer. So much longer.
Hours … the time it took for a jaani to become wild. And clearly a marabi hadn’t been here in that time.
Seconds … a jaani could possess you in a heartbeat.
The iluk say you never even notice, said his sister’s voice. How long had he shared the same roof? How long before he’d even noticed the body? Long enough? It might be too late for him. Was that a whisper in his ear?
“Amastan.”
He jolted back to awareness. Menna stood right in front of him, her usual calm fractured with worry. She’d grabbed his sleeve and he hadn’t even noticed.
“What. Is. Going. On?”
Amastan opened his mouth and then closed it again, deeply embarrassed. He knew how to kill a person a hundred different ways and yet here he was, afraid of a corpse. In all likelihood, the jaani was long gone, blown away and out of the city by the wind, off to torment some poor, lost iluk on the sands. He had nothing to fear. If only he could convince himself of that.
Thankfully, shame was stronger than fear. He cleared his throat. Pointed. “I found a body.”
Menna let go of his sleeve. “Why didn’t you just say?”
She didn’t wait for his answer. She found the foot first, like he had, and followed it up to the body. Amastan didn’t move—couldn’t—but listened as she examined the corpse. Was that the wind picking up, scraping between the alleys, or the rising wrath of an angry jaani? He touched the charm at his neck, but it was no warmer than his skin.
Just a body, he told himself. He slowly unstuck his feet from the ground and moved closer. Menna had found a stick and was poking the body with it. Now she knelt and drew some of the brilliantly dyed fabric back from a hand. Rings glittered, simple unassuming loops of metal: wedding bands. Four.
Menna jerked back as if bitten. She glanced at Amastan, his own panic reflecting in her eyes.
Only two types of people in Ghadid had more than one wife. Rarely, someone in the lower class could afford two, but the luxury and status of three or more was reserved for the most successful merchants—and the twelve drum chiefs. Taking the rich fabric and the like-new sandals into account, that meant they’d stumbled onto the corpse of a drum chief.
Worse yet, now that Amastan was actually looking instead of panicking, he noticed the blood. It had pooled around the drum chief in a broad circle that encompassed both him and Menna. Amastan stepped back, but the blood had long since dried to black. The drum chief’s wrap was stained from the waist down, but was otherwise clean. He’d died too quickly to fight.
“Fuck,” said Menna with an impressive amount of calm. She added a few more choice words, then said, “That’s Drum Chief Yanniq. Of the Aeser neighborhood.”
Aeser was a neighborhood two east and south, and one of the several entry points for iluk and their caravans. Amastan had stood on the edge of that neighborhood with his cousins just last night. He’d probably crossed it while they’d sparred.
So what was Yanniq doing here, in the Seraf neighborhood? And why had he been shoved between two crates on a disused rooftop? Whoever had killed him hadn’t wanted him found, at least not right away. If they’d wanted the body to disappear entirely, all they would’ve needed to do was toss the body over the edge of a platform to the sands. Which meant—had the killer wanted his jaani to run wild?
The death had been clean and fast. It had happened on the rooftop. The killer had led Yanniq here first, or followed him. That meant planning. This wasn’t a killing committed in a moment of rage or passion, soon regretted. This was worse.
This was murder.
“We should go,” said Menna.
“We can’t just leave him here.”
“Oh, yes we can. I’m not about to get caught near a drum chief’s body and tried for killing someone I didn’t. Come on.”
Menna didn’t wait. She hurried to the roof’s edge and swung down. Amastan heard her land on the street below a second later. He followed, surprised by his own reluctance. He knew, logically, that being near the body didn’t decrease the chance of the jaani being close by. Yet right now, that was the only place he knew for sure the jaani wasn’t.
For now.
Amastan followed Menna over the roof’s edge. She started off and away again, but this time he grabbed her sleeve before she could get too far.
“We need to tell someone.”
Menna shook him off, but stayed. “Not our problem.”
“It’s not,” agreed Amastan. “But the marab need to know there’s a wild jaani loose.”
“I’m not telling them,” protested Menna. “If the jaani is still here, I’m sure someone else will find it and let us know. People tell us all the time that their kettles or their dogs or their whatever are possessed by jaan. And—and the jaani probably isn’t in the city anymore. No need to start a panic.”
“But the body—the drum chiefs should know.”
“Then you go tell them. Or you tell a watchman. You know the first thing they’re going to ask you is what you were doing on that roof. You want to be the one they suspect? ’Cause that’s how you get to be.”
“Not a watchman.” Amastan bit his lip, running through all the possibilities and discarding them one by one. He quickly realized there was only one person they could tell. “Tamella.”
Menna blinked several times, frowned, then broke into a grin. “Well, yeah. She knows the drum chiefs. She could tell them herself.” Her grin shifted, settled, and faded. “I just don’t see how it’s our problem.”
“It’s the right thing to do,” said Amastan. Not only that, but the sooner the body was gone from the rooftop, the sooner he’d feel at ease. He didn’t like the idea of forgetting the body was there and running across it again. Not that he could possibly forget.
Menn
a rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’ll go with you. You know, so she doesn’t think you’re possessed and stick a knife through your eye.”
They took the streets this time instead of the roofs. They were only two platforms away, and even with the night’s bustle filling the streets, it didn’t take them long. The evening’s lingering glow was long gone, leaving them with torchlight and the promise of a moon. Tamella’s door looked different at night, its faded red now a dusted gray.
The door cracked open after he knocked. “Are you just that excited about work?” asked Barag.
“I need to speak to Tamella,” said Amastan.
“Oh.” Barag sighed. “Of course you do. Well one of these days, you’ll come around near midnight looking for me, I’m sure. Come in, come in.”
He ushered them inside. The room was quiet and empty, save where Tamella stood next to a table. Her daughter sat with her hands folded in front of her, her face turned upward in patient expectation. Tamella held a blade, turning it this way and that as she examined it. More knives lined the table in front of Thana, a honing stone next to her elbow.
Tamella set the knife down with a heavy thunk. “You’re not applying an even pressure to each side of the blade. These all need to be re-sharpened.”
For the briefest moment, Thana’s shoulders slumped and her carefully neutral expression collapsed in on itself. But in the next heartbeat, she was composed and as cool as stone. She stood, collecting the knives with her head bowed, then headed for the stairs.
“Song of my heart,” said Barag. “You have visitors.”
Tamella brushed off her hands, folded her arms, and leveled an expectant gaze on them.
“We found a body,” said Amastan.
Tamella raised an eyebrow. “And you came to me…?”