A Desert Torn Asunder

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  To the ship’s port side lay easy, rolling dunes with patches of perfectly flat sand. Along the starboard side were dunes the size of caravanserais. Known as the mounds, the dunes lounged like lizards, content in the knowledge that no ship could navigate their steep slopes. The formation was a strange phenomenon that occurred near summer’s end, a time when fitful sandstorms plagued the open sands. In a few more weeks, the winds would pass, the shift toward winter complete, and the dunes would slowly disappear.

  The mounds represented a strange combination of danger and safety. Pirates or enemy ships sometimes lay in wait along their gutters, which was why Çeda had ordered three lookouts to watch them, but sailing on open sand had its dangers, too. Çeda and her allies had no shortage of enemies, after all. Sailing close to the mounds allowed her the option of sailing into them to lose their pursuers, be they desert tribespeople, Sharakhani, Mirean, or Malasani.

  Hearing the scrape of footsteps, Çeda turned to see Emre climbing up from belowdecks. A smile tugged the corner of her mouth on seeing Emre work his way past Frail Lemi, who had strung a hammock between the foremast and a cleat on the cabin’s roof.

  Emre gave him a shove as he sidled past. “Who let this bloody ox on our ship?”

  His eyes still closed, his fingers laced behind his head, Lemi grinned his handsome grin as he rocked back and forth. “The gods gave me much, it’s true. No need to be jealous.”

  “Why don’t you string your hammock at the top of the masts? At least then you’d be out of the way.”

  “No!” Kameyl, a brawny ex-Blade Maiden Çeda had fought alongside countless times, called from the ship’s wheel. “He’d tip the damned ship over.”

  Lemi’s grin only broadened.

  Emre rolled his eyes, then gave Çeda a wink as he came to stand beside her. He wore sirwal trousers, sandals, and a loose shirt that revealed the dark hair along the top of his chest. His broad, boiled leather belt and bracers were new, but they reminded Çeda of the ones he’d worn years ago when they had lived together in Roseridge.

  Emre scanned the desert, his eyes a bit bleary. He’d just woken, having taken night watch. Çeda ran her fingers through his hair, feeling the scar from his surgery. To relieve the pressure from a terrible, lingering head wound delivered by Hamid’s lover, Darius, Dardzada had cut through Emre’s skin and used a carpenter’s drill to pierce his skull. She missed his long hair, but she had to admit the shorter hair, along with his pointed beard and mustache, gave him a roguish look she rather liked.

  A sharp whistle cut through the hiss of the skis.

  Çeda turned to see Shal’alara of the Three Blades, an elder of the thirteenth tribe, waving from the foredeck of the much larger Storm’s Eye sailing in their wake. She wore a battle dress similar to Çeda’s but, in her customary style, had dyed it a bright orange and embellished it with beaten coins, bracelets, and necklaces. The ruby brooch on her cream-colored head scarf glinted brightly in the sun.

  “There’s an oasis to the north,” she bellowed across the distance.

  There was no doubt everyone deserved a rest, but Sharakhai and the desert itself were still in deep danger. Making Hamid pay was only one of the reasons they needed to return to the valley below Mount Arasal. Çeda also needed access to the acacia tree, which granted prophetic visions. Çeda hoped to use them to learn how to close the unearthly gateway beneath Sharakhai.

  “We sail on!” Çeda called back. “We have enough water to reach the next.”

  Shal’alara nodded and began relaying the orders to Jenise, a fierce swordswoman and the leader of Çeda’s Shieldwives. Çeda was grateful to have them both. Shal’alara had rallied dozens to their cause, and Jenise had trained them, drilling them relentlessly with her Shieldwives. If Çeda succeeded in her quest, it would be thanks to their efforts as much as anyone else’s.

  Sümeya, the former First Warden of the Blade Maidens, came up from belowdecks wearing her black battle dress, her Maiden’s black. With five clay mugs of water gripped tightly in her hands, which she proceeded to pass around, she looked more than a little like a west end barmaid.

  Frail Lemi was just tipping the largest of the mugs back and swallowing noisily when Çeda felt something peculiar. It started as a tingling in the meat of her right thumb, where the adichara thorn had pricked her skin. It flowed through her fingers and up along her arm. It suffused her chest and for some peculiar reason made her keenly aware of the tattoos inked across her arms, chest and back. The sensation felt achingly familiar, though she couldn’t place it.

  As they came abreast of a colossal sand dune, the feeling became so strong Çeda’s ribs and chest tickled from it. It was enough to jog a memory loose.

  “Stop the ship,” she called immediately.

  Kameyl followed Çeda’s gaze to the crest of the massive dune, but made no move to obey. “Why?”

  “Just stop the ship!”

  Kameyl shared a look with Sümeya, then shrugged. “As you say.”

  They pulled in the sails and let the Bride glide to a halt. Behind them, Storm’s Eye did the same. All the while, Çeda faced the dune.

  “What is it?” Emre asked in a soft voice.

  Before Çeda could answer, an animal with cup-shaped ears, a long, pointed snout, and a ruff of red fur lifted its head over the top of the dune.

  “Breath of the desert,” Çeda breathed.

  It was a maned wolf, one of the long-legged creatures that roamed the desert in packs, often competing with black laughers for dominance over a territory.

  Frail Lemi set his mug down, grabbed his greatspear, and stared at the wolf as if fearful that hundreds more would come storming down the dune. “What’s happening?”

  But his words hardly registered. Another wolf was lifting its head along the dune’s crest. A third came immediately after, then a fourth. Soon more than twenty were staring down at the ships.

  Çeda held her breath, waiting, hoping.

  “Çeda?” Emre called.

  She raised one hand, and he fell silent. Several long breaths passed. The wind kicked up, causing spindrift to lift in curls and whorls. The sun beat down, warming Çeda’s cheeks, her neck, the backs of her hands.

  “Çeda—”

  “Shhh!”

  She took a deep breath. Released it slowly, praying.

  She was ready to give up hope when another wolf, a female with a white coat, lifted her head.

  For long moments, Çeda could only stare. She knew this wolf. Çeda herself had named her Mist. She’d been the inspiration for Çeda’s guise of the White Wolf in Sharakhai’s fighting pits. Gods, how powerful she looked now. How regal. On Çeda’s very first foray to the blooming fields with Emre, she had seen Mist as a pup. Years later she’d come to Çeda on the Night of Endless Swords, shortly after Çeda had killed King Mesut, and the two of them had traveled with the asir, Kerim, far into the desert. They’d stayed together for weeks until Çeda was discovered by scouts from Tribe Salmük.

  It seemed a lifetime ago. So much had changed since then, both in Çeda’s life and Mist’s. Thorn, the largest and fiercest of the pack, was nowhere to be seen. Mist seemed to be their leader now. The rest waited as she padded forward. At first Çeda thought Mist was going to come down to meet the ship, but she didn’t. She halted less than halfway down, as if waiting for Çeda to come to her.

  Çeda leapt over the gunwales, landing on the amber sand with a crunch. The sand sighed as she attacked the slope. Emre joined her, as did Sümeya.

  “Play with a pack of mangy wolves all you wish,” Kameyl called from deck. “I’m staying here with the olives and the araq.”

  A broad smile lit Frail Lemi’s face. “Olives and araq!” he roared, and fell back into his hammock. “I like the way you think!”

  When Çeda reached Mist, she hugged the rangy wolf around the neck and scratched her fur. Her musky smell whisk
ed Çeda back to their days hiding with Kerim in their desert cave.

  Mist was a lithe beast, and taller than Çeda. While she wasn’t the biggest wolf in the pack, she had a confident air. The others were attentive, subservient, courtiers awaiting their queen’s next pronouncement. For a while, she seemed content to revel in Çeda’s scratches, then she nipped at Çeda’s wrist, something she used to do when she wanted Çeda to follow.

  “Go on, then,” Çeda said with a smile, curious.

  Mist yipped, then howled, as if trying to speak. Then she turned and padded up to the crest, and the pack parted for her, creating a lane. One growled, but fell silent when Mist barked loudly.

  At the crest, Mist stopped and looked back, as if ensuring Çeda was following, then stared at something hidden behind the slope.

  Çeda’s breath was on her by the time she reached Mist’s side. Below them, half buried at the base of the dune, was a sandship. Its skis had long been swallowed by the sand, and the hull was almost wholly submerged, a thing that happened to unattended ships in the deeper parts of the desert. The bow had been lost to the sloping edge of the dune’s windward side, but the stern and the quarterdeck were still visible.

  “That’s a royal clipper,” Sümeya said.

  Çeda suddenly recognized it. “It’s one of the ships that attacked us.”

  Along the leeward side of the next dune, she saw signs of a second clipper, that one broken beyond repair, a victim of the goddess Nalamae’s power when she’d come to save Çeda and the others from the Kings.

  Mist headed down the slope. Çeda, Emre, and Sümeya followed. The other wolves paced alongside them in two broad wings—an honor guard of sorts.

  “Are you sure they’re not taking us somewhere to eat us?” Emre asked.

  “Be quiet,” Çeda said, “or I’ll offer you up as a snack.”

  Mist led them to the half-buried clipper and onto the main deck. From there she took the stairs down into the ship.

  “What—?” Emre began. He stared at Çeda with a confused expression but soon fell silent.

  They took the stairs down, where Mist led them to the captain’s cabin. The door was open, hanging from one hinge. Inside, a sifting of dust covered everything. Bottles and glasses and books had fallen from the shelves built into the hull. Broken glass lay everywhere, glinting. The shutters were closed, but light filtered in at an angle, segmenting the chaos into ordered ranks.

  The feeling that had blossomed inside of Çeda on recognizing the clipper grew stronger by the moment. There were wolf prints on the dusty floor. Retracing them, Mist wove beyond the desk to a locked chest in the far corner of the cabin, the sort the captain would use for valuables, the ship’s treasury, and more. Mist sniffed at the lid, yipped and whined, then tugged at Çeda’s sleeve.

  The air within the cabin felt suddenly oppressive. It was getting harder and harder to breathe.

  Above the shutters, mounted to the hull, was a ceremonial spear. Çeda took it down and wedged it beneath the lid. With Emre and Sümeya helping, they pushed and pried, and eventually the lid gave way.

  Çeda knelt before the chest. She balled her hands into fists. After taking one deep breath, she threw the lid back.

  “By the gods . . .” Emre said. “How?”

  Words failing her, Çeda could only stare in wonder. Her heart pounded as she reached in and took the object on top, a helm, the sort gladiators wore in the fighting pits. It had a wolf pelt along the top. The face guard, made of highly polished steel, was a mask molded into the likeness of a goddess: Nalamae. Beneath the helm was a set of boiled leather armor: a breastplate, a battle skirt, greaves, bracers, and gloves, all of which had been dyed white.

  It was her old armor, the set she’d used when she’d fought in Osman’s pits for money.

  Utterly confused, Çeda looked up to Sümeya, still holding the mask.

  “The armor was meant for the sickletail,” Sümeya said. “Nayyan told me they’d needed something of yours in order for the bird to find you.”

  “But how could they have found her armor?” Emre asked.

  “Osman,” Çeda said. “They had him in their prison camp. He must have told Cahil where it was. Or Ihsan might have commanded him to give up its location.”

  Çeda hardly knew what to feel. So much was rushing back to her. Her time in Roseridge with Emre. Her days learning the ways of pit fighting from her mentor, Djaga. Her many bouts in the pits. Her brief affair with Osman, owner of the pits. The journey she’d undertaken with Emre, which had led her to her uncle, Macide, and eventually to the King of the asirim, Sehid-Alaz—the start of her long and winding journey.

  Mist panted beside her, her tongue hanging out. Her ivory eyes were alive, her gaze flicking from the armor to Çeda and back. She knew she’d done good. Çeda hugged her tight, ruffling the fur of her mane and the spot between her ears she liked so much to have scratched.

  Mist leaned into it. Her tail wagged. For long moments she reveled in the attention, then suddenly broke away and faced the hull as if looking through the wood and sand to the Red Bride beyond. She hopped in the way she did when she wanted to run free.

  A moment later an attenuated whistle reached them. Çeda and Sümeya knew what it was immediately. Emre, however, didn’t know how to decipher the Blade Maidens’ whistles.

  “What?” he asked, staring at them.

  “It’s Kameyl,” Çeda said as she gathered up the armor. “She’s spotted ships.”

  They left the ship and took the slope up toward the crest of the massive dune. When they reached it, four ships could be seen sailing in from the north. Emre and Sümeya immediately began their slip-slide descent, but Çeda stayed behind. Shifting the armor’s bulk under one arm, she crouched and hugged Mist close.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Mist’s gaze flicked from Çeda to the distant ships. Several of the other wolves growled. One whined. Ignoring them, Mist butted her head against Çeda’s hand. After Çeda gave her one more scratch, she barked, then padded down the slope, away from the ships. Her pack followed in her wake.

  Çeda watched them go until Kameyl whistled again, then she turned and rushed down the slope toward the Bride.

  Chapter 4

  The sun was high when the former queen of Qaimir, Meryam, and her most faithful servant, Amaryllis, reached Sharakhai’s western harbor. There was a time when Meryam could have walked anywhere in the city, including the western harbor, without fear, not because she’d once been a queen of Sharakhai as well—though she had been—but because then she’d had power. Real power, not the ephemeral sort that comes from wearing a crown. Meryam had been a blood mage then, one of the most fearsome her homeland or the desert had ever seen.

  Those days were long gone. Meryam no longer had any power to speak of. Her throne had been taken by her cousin, King Hektor. Worse, Lord Ramahd Amansir, the husband of Meryam’s dead sister, Yasmine, had ordered the very ability to use the blood of others to be burned from her. In the short time the ritual had taken to complete, Meryam’s world had been reduced to one of craven fear and endless regret, a thing the sheer press of humanity only intensified.

  She found herself watching everyone—from the work crew resurfacing a yacht’s skimwood skis, to the line of women bearing baskets away from a docked ketch, to the gutter wrens who sized Meryam and Amaryllis up, judging their worthiness as marks. She spotted no less than twelve Mirean patrols during their short walk, the result of a display of force from the city’s new monarch, Queen Alansal of Mirea. Hundreds more moved along the piers and the crescent-shaped quay: men wearing thawbs and turbans, women wearing abayas and chadors. Ship’s crews laded and unladed ships. An auctioneer cried out bids at the auction block while caravan ships traded wares over the gunwales. Meryam watched them all, wondering which of them was planning to inform her enemies of her whereabouts.

  T
hat very morning, she’d sat at the edge of her bed, telling herself to get dressed. She knew in her bones how important their mission to the harbor was, and yet she’d been unable to do more than hold herself tight, rock back and forth, and stare at the clothing Amaryllis had laid out on the nearby rocking chair.

  On seeing Meryam’s state, Amaryllis had prepared a tincture. “Take this.”

  The cup she held out contained a purple liquid, and its depth of color made clear how much Amaryllis had upped the dose of calming medicine that had become part of Meryam’s daily routine.

  It probably would have been wise to take it, but the medicine muddied her thoughts. She couldn’t afford to fail in the coming negotiation. Too much depended on it. So she’d waved it away and got dressed.

  Her nerves steadied as she and Amaryllis neared the end of the quay. They returned, however, as the old sloop, The Gray Gull, came into view. The Gray Gull had been taken by the Moonless Host when the last of their high-ranking members, including Macide Ishaq’ava, had fled from Sharakhai. Adzin and most of the crew had been killed at the end of that wild escape. The ship itself, abandoned by the Moonless Host, had eventually fallen into the hands of Adzin’s closest relative, Yosef.

  Meryam stopped at the head of the pier and stared at it. By the blood of the one true god, it looked like a ship of the dead. Tatty sails, threadbare rigging, hull half-eaten by dry rot. It wasn’t so much the ship’s ghulish air, nor the meeting that was about to take place within it, that made Meryam’s footsteps falter and then stop; it was the weight of all that would follow. In Mazandir, the goddess Tulathan had given Meryam the body of the desert god, Goezhen, who’d been slain by his sister, Nalamae. She’d bid Meryam to take Goezhen’s corpse and use it to raise Ashael, the lone elder left behind when the other elder gods had departed this world for the next—except she hadn’t told Meryam where Ashael was, nor how to raise him. The search for Ashael had only just begun in earnest and Meryam had already lost count of the number of times she’d nearly given up. It all felt too big for her. Unattainable.