She ran to me, and together we danced with the zephyrs of the desert and shared a final kiss beneath the setting moon.
I woke late, as I had often done since that first night in the Valley of Rulers, but I smelled no brewing tea, nor any porridge, nor boiled eggs, nor fried dough. No servants scurried about preparing my apartments for the day.
“Khin?” I called.
He did not answer. I dressed and went to the door. My breath came quick and heavy, and my heart had begun to pound. The door was locked. I felt the weight of a wooden beam barring it shut. I shook the handle and heard the rattle of a chain.
“Khin!” I shouted. “What is the meaning of this?”
My tattoo itched beneath its bandage.
No. It had been less than a night. How could they possibly know?
“Khin!” I shouted into the gap of the door frame. Had he kept track of my comings and goings, reported back to Alabaster and Cinder and Rill? I imagined him creeping into my apartments while I slept, leaning over me, drawing down the sheets to reveal my freshly tattooed arm.
“Steward Khin!”
“Good morning, Hand Alder.”
Alabaster’s voice. He drummed his fingers on the door. I pressed my eye to the gap, hoping for a glimpse of him, but he stood beyond the narrow band of my vision.
“Or should I call you something else?” he purred. “Alder is a Sienese name, after all, and you are so much more, and less, than Sienese.”
“What is the meaning of this, Alabaster?”
I sounded desperate. A deep breath to calm myself did little good.
“We have known, Alder. All along we have known. Hand Usher knew in the moment he marked you with the tetragram. His foresight alone kept you from the executioner’s grasp. Do you know what the penalty for treason is, Alder?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“A teacup? Really? You thought we believed that a shattered teacup made all those little, intricate marks, so carefully arranged around the seams of your palm?” He chuckled. “Do you think we are blind? Hand Usher must have suspected when he made you recompose your examination left-handed. Perhaps even then he foresaw this day.”
“This day?” I said, my blood racing. “Hand Alabaster, you are speaking gibberish. Take me to Voice Rill, and we will sort through this misunderstanding.”
“The Voices know best of all!” he said, his tone venomous with glee. “It is through them the Canon is transmitted. They are the artery by which power flows from the Emperor to his Hands. Your foolish use of unrefined, barbarous magic, why, that stood out to them like a clot. This you were never told.
“We paid attention, Alder. Every ripple of your illicit power was studied. We had little use for the provincial, brutal shamanism of Nayen, but deception came naturally to you. That was a skill we could use.”
Breath caught in my throat.
“The Windcallers will hold this city hostage no longer,” Alabaster went on. “All we needed was the pattern of their magic, the ripple of its use. The art of it will be rebuilt to suit the Canon. Soon Windships will sail under the Imperial tetragram. An-Zabat will be fully ours. So sad that you will not survive to see the product of your labor.”
His eye appeared in the gap, staring into mine. I stumbled backward, and he laughed.
“Oh, poor Alder. Did you think you were one of us in truth?” He clicked his tongue. “Come tomorrow’s dawn your suffering will end. Cinder is sharpening his sword even as we speak. He is well practiced in administering his blade to Easterling flesh. He has a reputation for keeping his victims alive until that final slice, when their skin comes free.”
He left me there, stunned on the floor. Everything I had worked for, the pride I felt as the first Nayeni to become Hand of the Emperor, my hope for a quiet life of study in the Academy, it tore within me, leaving me hollow. I stared at the tetragram branded to my left palm.
The magic that so many Nayeni shamans had destroyed themselves to keep secret. The power to conjure the Wind, key to the survival of the An-Zabati people through countless generations of conquest and reconquest. I had unwittingly given both to the Empire.
I closed my fist, scrambled to my feet, and sought the black chest with three iron locks that I had brought from Nayen. Alabaster and Cinder had made me a prisoner in my own rooms, but they had left me all of my belongings. They knew a great many of my secrets, but not all.
Not all.
The obsidian blade of my grandmother’s knife was cool against the tetragram of my palm. I had last felt that blade when she gave me power. Now I used it to take power away.
To fight back I would need magic. Never again would I wield magic while bound to the Canon. Blood spilled from the tetragram as I cut the structures of the Canon away with my branded flesh.
The Canon was gone, a void where I had long felt a well of power. I felt only the free, wild magic of Nayen and An-Zabat. I stared at the ruin of my palm. Everything I had worked for. Everything my father had wanted.
And I realized, now that those things had all been cut away, how badly I had wanted them too.
I wrapped my hand tight in a scrap of linen, thrust the knife through my belt, and began searching for my way out. The door was locked, chained, and barred. There would be guards, and likely Cinder or Alabaster kept watch in case I tried to burn my way out. I went to the windows.
Locked, of course, and bolted from the outside. Where, on the path just a few steps from my house, Khin carried a bundle of laundry.
“Khin!” I shouted, and pounded furiously on the window.
He jerked to a stop and nearly dropped his burden.
“Khin!”
He looked around, frightened, then crept to my window.
“I shouldn’t speak to you,” he whispered. “Please, Your Excellence, let me be.”
“This is a misunderstanding, Khin,” I said. “They’ve locked me in here without a trial. They’ve denied me food and water, Khin. Please. Just a jug of water. You needn’t even bring it to the door. Just pass it through this window.”
Again he looked around, searching for prying eyes and ears. “Your Excellence,” he said at last, “I … shouldn’t.”
His eyes were sad. He glanced back at me as he walked away.
While I waited, wondering if he would return, I paced my floor and fought rising nausea. Even if Khin opened the window, it was much too small for me to squeeze through. Not without becoming much, much smaller. Not without magic.
I had twice replaced the bloody linen on my hand and the sun had begun to set by the time Khin returned with a water skin.
“Thank you,” I said. “Just open the window and pass it through.”
He gave me a last worried look. Second guessing himself, I imagined, wondering whether helping me was worth the risk. I could not blame him. I had been a poor friend, if friend I was. He opened the bolt of the window. I gathered power in my right hand and fought the urge to vomit.
I called the wind to slam the window open. Khin stumbled backward as I launched myself through and into the air. He screamed, but I was past him now, driving myself into the twilight sky on falcon’s wings. A ripple of power as vast as the wake of an armada trailed behind me. Alabaster, Cinder, and Rill would know that I had used magic to escape. If I was not careful, they would find me at the end of that wake.
I had one hope. For all they knew of my secrets, they had never learned that I could fly.
5
I rode desert thermals out into the Batir Waste, soaring wide around the Valley of Rulers before landing. If the Sienese came looking for me they would be led out into the open desert. I released the spell and stood on wobbly legs. The sun was setting, but heat clung to the sand. I should have taken the water skin from Khin before veering. Cursing my shortsightedness and sucking my cheeks to draw out what little saliva
I had, I set off at a flagging jog toward the Valley of Rulers, where Atar would be waiting for me.
If I hurried, I might reach her in time to pass on a warning, to tell her that the Windcallers had been betrayed.
How soon would Cinder begin his cull?
Not tonight, I told myself. So I hoped, and so I believed, and believing gave me the strength to run.
She was waiting for me, sitting on a boulder and watching the doors to the tunnels that flowed to the city. The light of the gibbous moon caught the line of her jaw and her lips, pursed with worry. I was late, and on the night after Katiz had marked me. Did she fear betrayal? No, I told myself. She likely feared that I had been discovered.
Her heart would break when I told her the truth.
I called out to her, and the tension in her body faded. My heart pounded in my chest. She rose and turned toward me, her relief overcome by confusion and concern.
“Why have you come from the desert?” she said as she offered a copper canteen. The water stung my chapped mouth, but it was blessedly wet and cool.
“The Sienese,” I said, when I could speak. I opened my left hand to show the bloody bandage. “They stole Windcalling for their Canon.”
She stared at my hand, and began to pull away from me.
“You would not have come back if this was your plan!” Her voice rose to a bitter cry. “Or is this another layer of betrayal? Then why say anything!”
“They stole my magic long ago. I thought it my secret all this time, but as soon as they branded me with the Canon they knew. They brought me here knowing that my curiosity would open the door to the Windcallers. Every magic that I worked they saw and studied and stole for their Canon.”
“How could you not know! You are schooled in their magic, are you not, Hand of the Emperor?”
“They never told me,” I said. “I was never one of them. They gave me power only to ensnare me.”
She scoffed. “They made you a fool.”
I tried to ignore the wound of her words and pressed on. “Atar, we have to tell the other Windcallers. Once the Empire has the power to drive Windships of their own, they will have no more use for you. What they cannot use, they destroy. You can vanish into the waste. Abandon An-Zabat to the Empire. Run.” I thought of my grandmother. “You can strike back later. Gather your power in the desert. Raid their ships and caravans. Flee now to fight tomorrow.”
She turned away from me. Her jaw was set, her hands clenched. “No.”
“Atar, listen to reason! You cannot fight them. They will kill you to the last!”
“They will not have our city,” she said firmly. “Get up, Firecaller. We need to find Katiz.”
Black clouds billowed up from the elevated harbor. Gusts of rising wind cut the smoke and swirled it like a spill of ink in water. We stood at the mouth of the alley where Atar had first led me into the tunnels and out to the Valley of Rulers. She curled her hands into fists, and I felt the heat of her anger.
I wanted to make things right, to heal the wounds the truth had dealt.
“Katiz will be at the Guildhall,” she said, and stepped out into the city.
“Wait.” I caught her wrist. Her forearm went rigid at my touch. “Cinder would attack the Guildhall first. Where would Katiz go to hide?”
She pulled away from me. “There is a place in the tunnels,” she said, brushing past me on her way back into the alley.
We took a new route through the tunnels, one that led deeper into the city instead of out into the waste. Our path led down a side corridor that echoed with hushed murmurs. It ended in an open chamber that smelled of the sweat, blood, and fear of many bodies. I recognized most of the gathering from the dances at the Valley of Rulers. Others were strangers to me. Some bore wounds; shallow slashes from Sienese swords, burns and shrapnel cuts from chemical grenades, fractal patterns of ruptured flesh left by a glancing blow from Sienese sorcery. Atar’s eyes lingered on those wounds, then glared at me in accusation. While she had been waiting for me in the desert, her people had been fighting.
Katiz stood at the heart of the gathering. He spoke in hushed tones with four other men. One wore Windcaller tattoos. The others carried swords, and I recognized them for Blades-of-the-Wind.
“Atar!” Katiz stood as we approached. “Thank the Goddess. So many have been lost …” His voice faded. Though he had seen me behind Atar, for a brief moment he had not recognized me as an outsider. Now, after a moment of reflection, his eyes hardened, and I was again cast out of place.
“Firecaller is with you,” he murmured.
“He came to warn us.”
“Not soon enough.” Katiz stepped toward me, menacing. “You must have known. At the very least you must have overheard something while they planned this.” He turned back to his council. “No matter. They have tried to steal Windcalling before. Other rulers have done the same in ages past. Always we survive. Last time we let the city stew in hunger for a year. Let us see how they feel after two!”
A defiant cheer filled the room. I gritted my teeth and glanced at Atar, who watched Katiz grimly.
“It is too late for that,” I said as the reverberating voices faded. “They have already stolen your magic.”
The room went silent. Whispers began to sound from the corners of the chamber.
“How?” Katiz said. “Did you—”
“He was betrayed,” Atar said. “One of the Imperial Hands learned that he was spending time among us and cast a spell on him, to watch us through his eyes.” She grabbed my left hand and held it up. The bandage over my palm was stained deep red. “He discovered the spell, cut every scrap of their sorcery from his body, and fled to warn us.”
“If what you say is true, the city is lost,” Katiz said finally. “We are lost.”
“No.” Atar stepped forward and set her jaw. “They know how to call the wind, but Firecaller never learned how to draw water. The city is lost to us, but we can deny them their victory.”
Katiz’s eyes lit up.
“Naphena’s urn has poured for thousands of years,” he said.
“It can be made dry,” said Atar.
He shook his head. “Once we begin, they will realize what we are doing, and they will stop us.”
I remembered the bowl in the Valley of Rulers, the silver filigree, so similar to the decoration on the city’s minarets. The power beneath An-Zabat. Slow ripples through the centuries that drew every drop of water beneath the waste up into the statue of Naphena, through her urn to the Great Oasis.
“The Sienese have weapons that can destroy a minaret in an instant,” Atar said.
“But we have none,” said Katiz.
“I can steal grenades for you,” I said suddenly. “With my grandmother’s magic I can take the appearance of a guard.”
“He can,” Atar said. “It is why I brought him here.”
I reminded myself that she would never forgive me, that when this was done she would hate me, no matter how I helped her, no matter how I struck back against the Sienese.
Katiz frowned at me, then nodded to Atar. “Very well, Winddancer. What is your plan?”
The citadel guard was stretched thin with so many soldiers dedicated to Cinder’s cull. I led our small party to the servants’ gate: Atar, a Blade-of-the-Wind called Shazir, and two runners who would carry grenades to the minarets furthest from the citadel. They all carried crates stuffed with rags and wore the simple caftans of porters. Atar had hidden her hair beneath a turban and dressed like a man. Not the cleverest of disguises, but we had little time.
I gathered power, hoped that Hand Alabaster and Voice Rill’s attentions were elsewhere, and called to mind the face of a minor lieutenant guardsman. The bones of my face stretched and bent, my flesh rippled and shifted as I veered. My robes had earlier become feathers for my wings. They now became the iron scale armor of a
Sienese soldier, complete with sash of rank and pointed helm. The two runners looked at me with wide-eyed fear and awe. Shazir gave a begrudging nod of approval. Atar was impatient to be about our work.
A small window set in the door opened to my knock. Khin peered out at me. I panicked, nearly ruining everything, as I remembered how twice I had betrayed him.
“Lieutenant?” he said. “What is the meaning of this? Did Hand Alabaster forget something?” He looked beyond me. “And who are these An-Zabati? Don’t you know there is fighting, stupid man?”
His brusque speech took me aback. A steward would be the superior to a lesser officer, I knew, but I was accustomed to a genteel, obsequious Steward Khin. There was a new, foreign harshness in his eyes that reminded me of a whipped dog.
I wondered if my escape were to blame.
More importantly, he had said that Alabaster was out in the city. Cinder would not leave the battle in his hands, which meant they both were away from the citadel. Only Voice Rill remained to see through my disguise and blast us all to bloody, minced chunks.
“Well?” Khin barked.
“Confiscated relics,” I said in a voice much deeper than my own. It was a matter of policy to eradicate the backward, barbarous culture of a conquered nation to make way for glorious Sien. A fate An-Zabat had escaped, though not for much longer.
“And who are they?” Khin jabbed a finger at Atar.
“Our fighting men are needed to put down the riots,” I said. “These An-Zabati porters were paid well. They have no idea what they’re carrying, anyway, and don’t speak our language.”
Which was true. I had been teaching Atar to speak Sienese, but her command of it was still limited. The men with us knew only numbers and silver and too much! and the other words that are learned in market stalls.
Khin frowned dubiously, but opened the door.
“Wait here,” he said when we had filed inside. “Voice Rill will sort this out. I’ve had enough of granting unusual requests today.”
He turned around, and for the third time I betrayed him. A sharp blow from the heel of my hand left him sprawled and unconscious on the ground. I felt a pang of guilt as we took his heavy key ring and hid him behind a juniper bush.
Writers of the Future Volume 34 Page 11
