Lords of the Black Sands

by J. Edward Neill

  She snapped her eyelids shut and open.

  She knew of what he spoke.

  Mariya.

  The Pharaoh’s satellite eyes.

  If anything happens to her, the Lord will see the rebellion coming.

  It’ll be over before it begins.

  Azid delivered a bowl of broth. She felt strong enough to sit up against the wall beside her bed, and so she did, wincing with each small tug of her battered muscles. Azid sank down atop the straw beside her. He seemed to like spooning the broth into her mouth. She allowed it, wiping away the line of soup he spilled down her chin.

  “You’re too kind to me,” she remarked between sips.

  “Am I?”

  “I haven’t earned this,” she sighed. “I’ve betrayed the Sisterhood. My mother…my grandmother. And Elia…my god. Everything she did…only to be killed by the man I could’ve stopped. If you know about the Sisterhood, then you understand.”

  “I do.” He spooned more broth into her mouth.

  “But now you’re giving me another chance?” She looked at him. She felt weak again, so tired despite her ten days of rest.

  “Another chance. Yes.”

  Eyes glazed, forehead slick with moisture, she gazed at the ceiling. She imagined the world beyond Azid’s house, the night sky ablaze with stars, the Pharaoh’s eyes roaming the dark.

  “You know her name?” she said. “My little sister? She’s been working at the tower for years, ever since her aunt died. The Pharaoh…he might already know. It might be too late.”

  “He doesn’t know.” Azid smiled. His next spoonful relaxed her. “If he knew, the satellites would’ve seen the rebels gathering in the east. We’d be dead, and all the others with us.”

  Her eyelids felt heavy as stones. Azid’s smile swam in her vision, and the comfort of her sad little bed, of the warm broth, and of his arm around her shoulders filled her with the contentment of sleep soon to come.

  He asked questions. His voice sounded far away, but she understood every word. How could she not understand? He was so handsome, so kind, and he’d saved her from an eternity of suffering.

  Answer, and then sleep, she told herself.

  He asked about her little sister’s name.

  Her age.

  Who her aunt had been.

  What she looked like.

  His questions followed her into the edge of sleep.

  And she answered them all.

  26

  Somewhere in the night, Thessia ascended from cavernous slumber.

  She’d dreamed again, only this time not of the Pharaoh, her torturers, or the abyssal chambers beneath the Pyramid.

  She’d dreamed of Mariya. And her dream had been so powerful, so real in her weary mind, it had woken her long before her slumber was supposed to end.

  Embers moved in the hearth, illuminating the bottom of the black iron pot. The room was otherwise dark, and the air as still as if she lay within a coffin. Her pain felt distant. She held up her hand before her eyes and realized most of her body was numb, just as it had been since she’d first awoken in Azid’s cellar.

  Something wasn’t right.

  She should’ve hurt more, should’ve felt her injuries humming inside her bones. Stranger yet, she felt fog move within her skull, dizzying her. Her torturers had never once struck her head, and yet her vision was blurred, her thoughts sloshing aimlessly through the thick places between waking and dreaming worlds.

  Only half aware of what she did, she clambered to her feet. The floor, shrouded in shadow, felt cool beneath her toes. She wore the same tattered gown Azid had dressed her in days ago, but she felt naked, the thin cloth lesser than air around her skin.

  She was floating, not walking.

  In utter silence, she drifted to the curtain. Azid had entered the room through the waifish cloth a hundred times over the last several days, but she had never seen beyond it. Ghostly, she tugged it aside and stepped into the space on its other side.

  No light existed.

  No sound.

  No feeling.

  Nothing.

  She toed the floor ahead of her, and found not stonework but packed earth, cool and dry to the touch. Light as air, she extended her fingers into the void and walked forward. Her foot found one earthen stair, then another. She climbed them one by one, ten in total, until she felt another curtain with her fingertips.

  Am I dreaming? she wondered.

  No.

  Silent, she fluttered through the second curtain. The space beyond was larger than her cellar, and the air less heavy. Moonlight filtered in through one doorway, while a second doorway stood black and empty, revealing nothing beyond.

  Three steps into the room, she bumped into a table. The impact startled her, and she stood in a strip of moonlight, pale and quiet as a ghost.

  Footsteps crunched in the sand beyond the house.

  She listened, and her heart thumped hard beneath her gown.

  Someone was coming.

  A door opened elsewhere in the house. Moonlight splashed in, and then vanished. Her skin crawled, and before she understood what she was doing, she dropped to her knees and hid beneath the table.

  Why am I afraid?

  Be calm, Thess. Be calm.

  No. Don’t.

  Azid stepped out of the dark doorway and into the room. She saw his booted feet clomp past the table, and she watched him stride into the adjacent room, his boots touched by moonlight.

  Azid hadn’t ever worn boots into her cellar, least of all not polished black boots with silver zippers, the same kind in which the Pharaoh’s knights often marched. She saw him sit in the moonlit room, drink from a cup, and lift something from the crude desk at which he sat.

  A pen?

  Is he writing something?

  She sank lower to the floor. Shivering, she looked to the curtain hanging over the stairs she’d climbed. Her first thought was to skitter back down to her room and tumble into sleep.

  But she couldn’t shake her fear.

  Azid continued writing. The sound of his pen scratching atop paper was one she hadn’t heard in many years. No one was allowed to read or write in the Pharaoh’s kingdom, none besides the scientists tucked away in the Pyramid’s bowels. Thessia’s mother had taught her and Elia, but only at night, only using sticks to draw in the sand, and never in the presence of others.

  Azid shouldn’t know how to write, she reasoned.

  Unless…

  Her eyes caught the glint of something metallic on the table’s underside. She’d have missed it, if not for the way the moonlight pooled on the floor beside her. She reached for the slender object, touched it, and pulled it from its resting place under the table’s lip.

  What’s this?

  The slender silver cylinder was cool to the touch.

  Perhaps seven inches long.

  Featureless but for a black button on its side.

  Oh god.

  A dark-lance.

  The weapon felt evil in her grasp, and yet she didn’t put it back. Something felt all wrong about its presence in Azid’s house. Why would he need a dark-lance? How would he even have one when only the most decorated of the Pharaoh’s knights were allowed to carry them? Had he stolen it? Smuggled it in from elsewhere?

  How does he have it?

  Shivering, she slid out from beneath the table and stood in the moonlight. Azid, still busy writing, didn’t look up from his work. He was just a shadow, just twenty feet away in the next room, but suddenly she feared him. The dark-lance, she tucked close to her wrist. She wondered if merely holding it would summon the Pharaoh’s men to the house and cause her quick and certain death.

  Something else seemed wrong.

  There, on the table.

  A cup. A wooden spoon. A bowl with rice stuck to its bottom.

  No, none of those things.

  What felt wrong were the three silver rings, tarnished but still somehow beautiful, lying in a little heap beside the bowl.

  Sh
e’d seen the rings before.

  They’d been on Babar’s fingers.

  “You shouldn’t be up here.” Azid’s voice startled her. When had he entered the room? She hadn’t heard him stand. His heavy boots hadn’t made a sound.

  “Ummm…I’m sorry,” she stammered. “It’s just…I couldn’t sleep.”

  Azid looked confounded. The kindness she’d seen in his eyes during previous nights was gone, replaced with something resembling anger. “Couldn’t sleep?” he snapped. “How not? You drank all your broth. I fed it to you myself.”

  The broth.

  It wasn’t just soup.

  It was—

  “What are you doing upstairs, Thessia?” he asked. “You should be resting. We finished with our talk. The rebellion has what it needs. Now…you can sleep and not worry.”

  He took one step toward her. She retreated two steps and halted in the moonlight. Unable to help herself, she looked to the table. To the rings.

  Babar’s rings.

  Azid glanced down, saw the bowl, and offered one of his smiles, which looked more serpentine than before. “Oh, I see,” he said. “You’re hungry. You’ve eaten little more than broth and soggy bread for ten days. You want rice? I can make some for you.”

  “No.” She shook her head. Her fear was obvious, she knew. With a shiver, she tucked the dark-lance tighter to her wrist.

  “No?” Azid advanced another step, and she backed out of the moonlight. “You’re acting strange, Thess. Look at you—you’re shaking. You’re exhausted. Let me take you to—”

  “What did I tell you?” she said. “About my little sister…what did I say?”

  “Well…everything.” He shrugged. Now that he occupied the moonlight, she was able to see the tension in his shoulders.

  “She’s been hiding all these years just fine without your help,” she countered. “Why would she need you now? She’s helped more than just rebels and snakes in the sand. She knows what she’s doing. She’s not a little girl anymore.”

  Azid licked his teeth. Thessia understood his hesitation.

  He’s deciding, she knew. What to do with me.

  “What was in the soup?” she challenged him.

  “Medicine,” he said. “To help you heal.”

  “Medicine?” She had to control her temper. “To help me heal…or to make me pliable? What else did I tell you? Did you sneak me out of the Pyramid…or did they let you walk right out the front gate?”

  She caught the tiny spasm in Azid’s eye, the anger he tried and failed to conceal. She wondered what his designs for her were—whether he meant to smother her in her sleep—

  Or take me away from here…pretending to be a hero. And make me his bride.

  “My sister…” She held him at bay with the sharpness of her voice. “What are you going to do to her?”

  Again, Azid licked his teeth. The tension in the room settled into him, tugging his neck muscles in obscene patterns. Somehow, Thessia felt no fear.

  “I didn’t want…” He reached into the beltline of his dark, too-fine pants. “…I didn’t want it to be this way. You were with the Lord’s son, but Eadunn is gone—he has sacred work to do. You could have made another choice.”

  From a hidden scabbard below his belt, he produced a blade. It was short, black, and in the moonlight bore the two pale lines of House Varwarden. The lines formed a pyramid’s top, sharp and cold and perfect.

  The Pharaoh’s mark.

  For possessing such a thing…a machine…any other man would’ve forfeited his life.

  But in her heart, she’d already known.

  He killed Babar.

  He lied.

  He is my enemy.

  “Now Thessia, I—”

  She lifted the dark-lance and whisked it through the air. Her motion was swifter than the wind, quieter than a grain of sand falling. The dark-lance’s black button, she clicked for only an instant, needing just the soft sensation of it beneath her thumb to activate it.

  There was no flash of light.

  No explosion.

  No searing heat.

  It was just as she remembered from her childhood. The Pharaoh’s knights, in armor black as pitch, in masks without eyes, swinging their silent dark-lances in perfect rhythm, killing men without effort.

  Azid didn’t have time to scream. Invisible, the lance’s beam caught him beneath his left arm and ended just above the right side of his jawbone. It carved him cleanly in two. His bottom half thudded to the floor, followed by most of his head and a chunk of his upper left arm.

  Thessia breathed.

  The sickly-sweet odor of burnt flesh hit her first, followed by the smell of white-hot stone. She’d been close enough for the dark-lance’s beam to tear right through Azid’s body and scorch the rock wall behind him. In the dark, she saw the red line smoking in the rough stones, though it died almost as quickly as Azid.

  She breathed again.

  The dark-lance fell from her fingers and clattered on the floor.

  With sweat and tears sliding down her cheeks, she floated into the room in which Azid had sat and written. She lifted the single sheet of parchment from the low table and brought it into the moonlight. She didn’t care that she stood next to Azid’s torn body.

  She raised the paper to her eyes and read:

  Date: Dhū al-Ḥijjah 13

  Reporting: Azid-Dah, Azid-Mosha - Operative: 2798

  Location: Servant Village

  Deliver to agent Volkan Osiri - Operative 2599 – Location: His Lordship’s airfield – no later than Dhū al-Ḥijjah 15

  — Classified —

  Objective achieved

  Subject is Mariya Tahir, age 26, daughter of Iriba Tahir-deceased

  Subject is female, but may be disguised as male. Subject has black hair, slender build, golden eyes, and will be paler than typical Persi woman due to extended time removed from sunlight.

  Subject has been located. Occupies Shadii Tower, Alexandria, likely level 9

  Kill on sight. Repeat—kill on sight. Warship use approved. Mariya Tahir is rebel Sisterhood operative 6011. Subject has advanced contraband knowledge, notably control specs for anti-Prey/anti-contraband satellite grid. Subject and her allies have used grid to disguise movements of Prey and rebel operatives for at least sixty years, likely much longer.

  Removal of this operative will likely restore satellite grid to normal operation, allowing easy location of rebel operative 1, the Prey, and classified operative 6200, Saeed of Persi.

  Kill on sight.

  Report obtained from rebel operative 22, Thess—

  Azid hadn’t finished his letter, but he’d written enough. Thessia stared and read it thrice over.

  Helpless against her emotion, she wept.

  And let out bursts of laughter between her tears.

  She’s alive.

  Mariya’s alive.

  Without this letter…

  …hope.

  27

  Galen heard his mother’s voice.

  And was helpless but to heed it.

  Through hallways with gleaming silver walls and rooms filled with blinding light, he moved. As he walked, his mother’s voice narrated, guiding him through his dream as though she were the morning star and he a nomad roaming the midnight sands.

  “Through the white door, Galen.”

  “There, see the big room? The one with glass walls?”

  “Walk quietly, Love. Don’t touch anything. You know we’re not allowed to touch things here.”

  Ghostly, he walked.

  He saw people in pale coats with transparent masks covering their faces.

  He glimpsed rows and rows of machines, clean and humming, far more perfect than anything the Pharaoh and his army of scientists had recreated.

  Masked and aproned men and women swept past him with beakers, glass cylinders, and papers in their hands. They were in a hurry. They’d just discovered something.

  He knew this place. He’d never been here, of
course. It had been built two centuries before his birth.

  But through his mother’s stories, he’d learned all about it.

  “See that machine, the big one with the glass window and the centrifuge?” she said in her ever-soft voice.

  A thousand times, he’d wondered what a centrifuge looked like. He’d dreamed of such machines before, but he’d never known whether his sleeping mind did justice to a device seven centuries old.

  “It spins the chemicals together, Galen,” she explained.

  “Chemicals?” he asked in an almost childish voice.

  “Mixtures of many things,” she answered. He could almost feel her smile on his cheek. “These liquids—the scientists have realized their power. They’re going to do something magical. It will forever change the world.”

  He watched the giant centrifuge rotate behind its glass window. The great steel cylinder spun and spun, separating liquids and tiny solids into layers of red, yellow, and murky brown. Standing beside him, dozens of scientists watched just the same. Their eyes were wide with excitement. He sensed they’d waited a long while to reach this moment.

  He blinked.

  And found himself in a different kind of room.

  Encased in glass, lying atop white padding, a naked infant wriggled. Its eyes were bright, but full of tears about to burst. For a lone breath, Galen looked at his hands and then to the child’s.

  “Is it me?” he asked. “Look—they’re injecting a vial of those chemicals into its neck. The baby…is it me?”

  He heard his mother’s soft laugh. She wasn’t mocking, only gently correcting.

  “No, Love. Look closer. The baby is a girl. It’s not you. It’s me.”

  He squinted, and through the glass he saw. A scientist, her hands gloved and her mouth hidden behind a blue mask, injected the contents of a syringe into the girl baby’s bottom. The child squealed in pain, but no one moved to comfort it. Everyone, even Galen, just stood and watched.

  “They’re waiting for something,” he said to his mother. None of the scientists could hear him.

  “Yes, Love. They’re expecting me to die like all the others before me. But I don’t die, not here,” she answered. “Not until a long time from now. Not until my children are born.”