Fire Dance

by Ilana C. Myer

  Julien’s fears were hardly abated by these words. Dorn looked annoyed. “So we have to be on the lookout for these—threats—without any sort of weapon to defend ourselves. That’s splendid.” He sounded cutting, as if speaking to one of his schoolmates. “Perhaps you’ll at least tell us where we’re going?”

  The woman was unmoved. When addressing them she never seemed fully engaged, as if they were as unreal to her as she was to them. “I have my instructions. I will try avoid threats.” Her eyes looked past his shoulder, past them both. “We’ll soon be at the city.”

  * * *

  IT was time to feed him. Though Nameir had to crawl through the grass to his tent, dragging her injured leg behind her, she never let anyone else do it—though few were left who could have, anyway. Of the thousands who had marched north, less than a hundred fighting men remained. Most wounded. Across the hills they made agonizingly slow progress, dependent on the goodwill of villagers for food and water. People came out to them with what supplies they could spare, their faces drawn. They knew what the armies had gone north to do. Knew what failure could mean.

  In the north, smoke was still rising. Nameir had helped build the pyres along with those few able-bodied enough for the task. It went against the will of Alfin, but rules were relaxed in times like this. There was no way to bury so many.

  No additional attacks had followed the sack of Almyria. Not yet. Nameir did not know what this meant—if it meant anything—and only knew it was imperative that she and the prince reach a place where he could submit to the care of a medical practitioner. In other words, his home.

  Meanwhile news from the Zahra had come. The queen had fled the palace, along with the Second Magician. Rumors and speculation flew thick and fast even in the villages. A demon woman … a witch … a Ramadian spy.

  That last gave Nameir pause. Not that she had any reason to think Rihab Bet-Sorr was Ramadian, but the idea that she might be spying …

  It concerns the queen, the Fire Dancer had said.

  She and Mansur had initially thought, perhaps, the Fire Dancers were in collusion against the queen. Perhaps they were, and the queen, afraid, had fled.

  Or perhaps she was a spy, and Tarik abetted her somehow.

  Either theory left a good deal unexplained. They were missing pieces.

  Summer was arriving early in the hills, blown from the desert. It was clean air, at least, sweeping away the smoke from the north. Still the stench remained.

  Nameir’s throat was dry as she dragged herself on hands and knees into the tent. “My lord,” she said, though it came out in a hoarse wheeze.

  He was lying still on his blankets. A fly buzzed on the wound on his forehead. Another circled. Nameir swallowed her fear. “My lord,” she said again, more loudly. He gave the faintest of groans, enough to confirm he’d lived another day.

  When she reached his side, she did as she had every day since they’d fled Almyria. Though those first days had been spent in a desperate fight to stanch his bleeding skull. She’d known enough to sew it shut, with the needle run through flame to rid it of contaminants and disease. A Galician doctor had shown her that trick, years before. Mansur’s cries had nearly undone her; she’d needed more heart to force the needle through his flesh than she did on the battlefield.

  By now he had stopped bleeding. It remained to be seen whether the damage had reached his brain. She hoped the Zahra with its staff of Galician and Ramadian doctors would have reassuring answers. She tried not to think of the reverse possibility—if the news was bad, they’d be the ones to know.

  Painfully—it was hard while balanced on one leg—she raised him partly upright. Then, when he was balanced against the wall, used both hands to prise open his jaws. First came water, dribbles of it, distributed slowly. Too quickly and he would fail to absorb it, would dry out again as swiftly as did the yellowing grasses of the hills. She did this several times each day.

  The other thing she did, after, was feed him. This was a liquid, rennet and curds in a flask, that she poured down his throat in dribbles as she had the water. She worked his jaws around it, was glad to see that he swallowed.

  He had neither opened his eyes nor said a word since Almyria. The worst fight they’d ever seen. She had been engaged in one combat after another—the enemy kept coming—her throat torn with shouts. She was certain that night that she would die and meant to take as many Fire Dancers with her as she could. Through a haze saw Mansur from behind, surrounded by three men. She began to run towards him, cutting her way. Not fast enough. She did not see the blow that shattered his helmet; only later recalled how it lay on the ground in shards like bloodied seashells. Borne on rage she arrived at that spot, too late, to confront the Fire Dancer who landed the blow. From that time, her memory blurred; she had been more intent on defending the body at her feet than on anything else she’d ever done.

  By then it was close to dawn. That was her good fortune, as it happened—the only reason she and the few who remained had survived. At daybreak the living Fire Dancers vanished, leaving behind the bodies of their slain. As always these rotted within moments, leaving behind a boiling stench and the remains of white cloaks.

  Nameir’s memory of the lost battle was drowned in a red mist. She’d been aware at the time of what was happening: that they’d been swarmed, taken by surprise despite precautions, by a force larger than they could ever have planned for. But she’d been too preoccupied, from the moment it began, to absorb it as an experience.

  The same could not be said for what came after. When she and the stragglers who remained paced through the bones of that golden city. The red and black and sickening green of what should never have seen daylight spattered on the cobbles, roiling in gutters.

  When she’d seen the heads atop the battlements, she almost turned to flee. But then recalled the dignity of Lord Ferran. That knowing what she was, he’d wanted her in command of his men.

  In the end, she’d climbed the battlements and cut him down herself, as well as the other lords. It had taken days to recover his body and she had done that, too. While at the same time making sure to tend Mansur and his ghastly wound, day after day and every night when he woke screaming.

  She had served under the prince for five years, six before that under various viziers and warlords after lying about her age at twelve. Yet nothing aside from childhood memories that with the years had faded like dried blood could compare. These were the darkest days of her life.

  Later her torn hamstring had given out, as it was going to, and all the harder for the neglect she’d shown it when initial shock had numbed the pain. She’d directed one of the surviving men in the task of binding her leg. All the horses were slain; she’d requisitioned a mule at one of the villages and rode that, dragging a cart bearing the prince behind her. It was the stuff of dirges and elegies, what they had come to.

  She recalled Mansur singing beside the fire and thought about how even when you knew a particular moment mattered more than all others, it was impossible to feel as if you’d contained it. She had always known those moments in her life would matter, for whatever length of time she was given. But the knowing was not enough.

  It was, at any rate, Mansur who had introduced her to dirges and elegies. For the losses that had made her what she was, Nameir had neither music nor words. At first because she was too preoccupied, as an orphan adrift, with staying whole; after, because the business of war precluded such things. Until she joined the prince, saw how his passion for battle ran alongside other passions until they intertwined.

  With the few words of her childhood that she remembered, Nameir Hazan prayed in the night. The sky was choked with smog, a fervid red without stars since Almyria. She hoped her prayers could nonetheless reach the god. Sometimes she even prayed to Alfin—though she loathed to do so—if only for expediency’s sake. For how could the Alfinian god not adore a warrior like Mansur Evrayad? And why would the Unnamed God save a descendant of people who had murdered so many of his?
So she dodged the memory of her father’s face, the candles at his forbidden shrine, and sent a prayer to the tyrant god.

  The smell of death trailed them on the wind, day by day. She’d hoped to shake it off eventually, but they never did. On the bright afternoon they reached the River Gadlan and saw minarets of the capital nested in the valley, the death smell was still there. It had followed them all the way home.

  PART IV

  CHAPTER

  22

  SMOKE the color of saffron clouded Lin’s eyes, made her blink as she played. She half-reclined on a floor cushion, a lute cradled loose in her arms. The song was one Zahir had taught her earlier that day. She was sprawled at his feet in a languid pose, as if she’d been drugged. He stood, hands gesticulating as he sang.

  Her head was tilted back in a semblance of drowsiness: she peered through the smoke and about the room from under her eyelids. The master of the house was rubbing his hands together, eyes fixed on Zahir Alcavar. Nearby sat his son, looking polite and attentive—if a bit expressionless, Lin thought. Perhaps he didn’t care much for music. He was thin and unassuming as his father was powerfully built.

  For her part, Lin was fast gaining an insight into the people of Vesperia who had come out in crowds to hear Zahir sing. The friendship between him and Valanir Ocune took on a new dimension—had the apprenticeship run both ways? She wondered if Valanir had given the Magician some pointers.

  Khadar Zuhalan and his son Zweir were some of the most powerful operatives in Majdara. But that wasn’t exactly why she and Zahir were here. Lin stole another covert glance at Khadar, the father. A fleshy man, though muscular: he kept himself fit, likely knew how to wield the cudgel that rested in a corner of the room. He traveled often on business, which had mostly to do with investments. And travel necessitated an acquaintance with the art of defense. Or at least its brute fundamentals.

  Just now his defenses were down: the yellow smoke rose from a long pipe he periodically drew from, his features relaxed. From time to time he passed the pipe to his son. But he otherwise kept his full attention on the song.

  Zahir gave himself to the rapture of his performance. His silk shirt, bloused at the wrists, was finely tailored; a cluster of sapphires caught in a net of silver hung from his left ear. Khadar kept his eyes fixed on the First Magician as if at a delicacy he would have liked to eat.

  So far it went according to plan.

  It was a plan Lin despised. Deception, skulking, were not acts of which she approved. She didn’t know what Zahir’s feelings were. How he felt about deceiving this man. But she thought of Eldakar, and what was happening in the Academy, and of course of Valanir, which caused her to bow over her instrument and tighten her lips as she played. She was wearing a silk gown, bare at the shoulders, lavender and infused with cheap scent. Her hair was curled at the top of her head and crowned with gold chains that flowed to her shoulders, were cold on her cheeks. Her sandals, hastily borrowed, were too large and slid on her feet. A vain getup—she disliked that part as well. It recalled too clearly what it had been like when she had been a possession of Rayen’s, to buy and sell. But tonight, that was how it had to be. She was a singing girl, prized only in part for musical abilities. Bought for a night by a wealthy man to perform alongside a celebrated singer. Tonight, that was who she was.

  Shantar Nir had made it clear that she was not the focus of the evening. That all would be well if she stood aside for Zahir. And Zahir himself—well, that was another surprise. The man currently singing for a bewitched aristocrat was taller than the First Magician, with broad cheekbones and dark, soulful eyes.

  She had watched him transform. He had suggested she watch, so there would be no doubt in her heart who he was. With so many enemies around and about, with people like the queen and Second Magician having turned out to be other than they presented themselves—even Ned, even Ned—it made sense.

  So at first light before they went into the city she followed Zahir Alcavar into the Tower of Glass. The Tower at that time of the day was all a greyness, neither dark nor light. He led her to the chamber of infinite mirrors, where she saw too many copies of herself, hollow-eyed and gaunt, from every unforgiving angle. From the back, her head looked bowed, spine curved, as if she had begun to curl inward like a decaying leaf. Since the news of Valanir she hadn’t eaten. A lump in her stomach had settled there, filled her like a sickening kind of meal. Now she saw what a week had wrought and vowed to do better. She was indulging in grief by letting herself weaken.

  The mirrors were kinder to Zahir. She wondered if fatigue and long hours of close conversation with Eldakar had made her begin to see the First Magician through his eyes. Not that she ever could. Lin did not think she could view anyone with a gaze so unselfconscious, so uncritical. There was too much Amaristoth in her.

  Zahir stood in the center of the mirrored room and spread his arms wide. He began to chant an invocation that might have been Ramadian; it was strange to her. His head thrown back. In his tone, an unmistakable ring of command.

  It was only when the green glow engulfed him that she realized it was not the magic of the Tower of Glass Zahir was drawing upon to make his transformation. When the light had dissipated and Lin found herself looking at a different man, taller, with dark eyes, she shook her head. “You used … that thing … for this.”

  He smiled with teeth that were larger, and more white. “Scratch a djinn, get a long history of shape-shifting. It’s what they do best. Turning into unearthly beautiful women or men to lure their prey, or to have a jape at a mortal’s expense. I’ve been doing this for a long time. How else could I go about the city unnoticed? Various of the aristocracy know my face.”

  “And you are sure there is some … hideout of Fire Dancers in the city?”

  Zahir had proposed that instead of proceeding directly north, that they try to procure information that might be to their advantage in the city. A secret lair of Fire Dancers would be one such place—if they could find it. If it existed.

  “I can’t be sure,” he said. “It may be a legend. But my thought is … the Renegade considers himself a king, like any other. And a king must have spies.”

  “How will we find it? This … lair?”

  Zahir turned to her with his strange new face, bared those strange white teeth in a grin. “I know a man.” The cut of his clothing looked different on this new body, somehow careless. The mirrors reflected his new form from all angles, thousands of them. “There’s one catch. He’ll want a favor.”

  On their way down the mountain as the mists of early morning lifted, he told her of the sort of man they were to see, the sort of favor he’d want. They had departed the Zahra by the same concealed door Lin had used on her trips to the city. She wore a scarf of blue silk wrapped around her head and neck—concealment as well as protection from the sun—carrying only whatever she could on her person. The simplest of clothes. Her knives. She left behind her guardsmen from Tamryllin, under the command of Garon Senn; and she’d sworn their service to Eldakar for as long as he might require them. Garon was not happy, she knew—he didn’t like being outside her sphere of confidence, that he did not know where she was going. She didn’t care. He would serve faithfully and ingratiate himself with Eldakar, the better to secure his self-interest.

  She left behind the songs she had written, in that Tower of the Winds only she could access. Had been tempted to burn them, but couldn’t. They’d emerged from pain she didn’t know she had, and for that she hated them, but she could not destroy them. One’s shadow.

  Zahir traveled similarly, without burdens. A simple shirt and trousers replaced the brocade and jewels of office, though he did wear an embroidered vest. He looked prosperous, carefree. The lute strapped to his back looked well-oiled, with strings that gleamed, but with a worn finish. She suspected it predated his arrival in Kahishi—a long time indeed.

  Once in the city, he led her through back streets. These were darkened even in the morning, so narrow and hemmed in w
ere they by rows of black-eyed dwellings that left only a sliver of sky. The gutters that ran down the center of the streets, down steps, were not as clean as elsewhere she had seen. This was one of those parts of the city such as she knew well from her time as a destitute poet in Tamryllin; a part that was cared for less.

  It was on a street like this that they came to a metalcrafter’s shop. Its sign showed a pair of crossed scimitars above a round shield. There was a man at a worktable within. Swords and daggers of all kinds hung on the walls. She took them in at a glance: nothing remarkable leaped to the eye. Tools of the trade, well-made but without embellishment. The man who greeted them was of an iron mien like his merchandise. Zahir murmured to him and motioned Lin to follow. The man didn’t watch them go.

  The back room of the shop held a variety of oddments: barrels, bales of cloth, chests. It was dim, lit only by whatever penetrated from the window at the front of the shop, and dusty. Zahir made for one especially large chest in the corner. It was nearly the length of a man, black, bound with iron. The Magician spread his hands. Uttered one word in Kahishian, low and clear. “Dakhira.”

  There was a click. For a moment nothing else happened. Then, as Lin watched, the lid of the chest began to rise: a smooth, oiled movement and without a sound. Though she’d been prepared for this, she was unsettled. Zahir went to prise the lid farther, expose what was inside.

  Lin thought of the word used for the charm. It seemed an odd choice. “Memory?”

  “It is an open door.” His grin was wry. “Whether or not we’d have it so.”

  He climbed inside. Lin watched as Zahir descended the wooden ladder that extended down into the tunnel concealed by the false bottom of the chest. There was, at the very edge of the dark she could see below, a hint of light. At last, grateful for the trousers she wore, she climbed in after him.

  On their way down the mountain Zahir had said, “In the capital, I go by another face, another name. I am an itinerant musician. I come bearing tales from the world over—of cities and sights far away. And I listen. I listen more than I speak, or sing.”