Twelve Kings in Sharakhai

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

He was only joking. He let Emre take whatever spices he wanted; oils, too. It was the one thing that saved their dishes from dropping below mere mediocrity and heading straight for inedibility. Seyhan was generous enough with his coin, too—he gave Emre a few extra sylval when the stall had bustling days like today—and yet Çeda was still surprised Emre had stuck with Seyhan for as long as he had. He was always flitting from this job to that. They always became tiresome—I want something that interests me, Çeda, else why bother?—as if jobs were nothing more than dalliances. But he seemed to genuinely like old Seyhan, and for that Çeda was glad.

  She was saved from replying to Seyhan’s accusations when a tall man with brown, leathery skin stepped close and took a piece of biscuit. After placing it carefully in his mouth and chewing as if his very life depended on the weighing of the spices contained within, the two of them began talking in Kundhunese, and Çeda moved farther along the tables, which had dozens of open bags of spice. So many, from so many different places. If the four kingdoms surrounding Sharakhai were a great wheel—Mirea, Qaimir, Malasan, and the Thousand Territories of Kundhun—then Sharakhai was surely its hub, and the spice market reflected this: a veritable palette of cultures from a thousand leagues in any direction.

  Çeda was about to call out to Emre, who still hadn’t noticed her, when two young women broke away from the crowd and approached him together. They were pretty Mirean girls. Creamy skin and exotic eyes and lustrous black hair. Sisters, perhaps, and clearly from a wealthy family—their rich silk dresses and bright jade jewelry spoke clearly of that.

  “You came back!” Emre said, standing up straight and putting on the smile he often gave to women he’d only just met. He apparently thought it charming. His black beard was braided and hung down his bare chest, almost to the top of the wide tooled leather belt he wore, the one that matched the bracers on his muscled forearms. One of the girls smiled, averting her gaze, but the other stepped close, clutching a small silk purse in both hands.

  She said something too soft for Çeda to hear, and then Emre bowed his head to her and filled two bags with practiced ease, one with pink desert salt, the other with some bright orange spice Çeda had never seen before. Emre chatted with them as he worked, then held the bags behind the table while prolonging the conversation. As Çeda watched him, she wondered, not for the first time, why Emre never gave her that smile. He might’ve done so a few times before they’d lain together, but ever since, he’d treated her differently. He’d joke with her when they were around others, play like they were a couple when it suited him, but when they were alone, he never crossed that line.

  The woman with the purse tittered. The other watched in silence with wide eyes, cheeks reddening.

  Çeda should probably just leave him alone. She didn’t really care who he shared his bed with—she didn’t—but there was something about these women, sailing in from some distant port, wandering about the Amber City as if it were some long-neglected holding they’d finally deigned to visit. It chafed.

  “Four months?” she said, loudly enough to be heard over the din of the market. She ignored the women as she stepped opposite Emre. “Four months, and now I find you here?”

  The Mirean girls looked confusedly between Çeda and Emre.

  Emre, however, glowered at her. He was trying to hide his annoyance and hoped he still had a chance to a chance to bed one of these women tonight. He might even have fancies of both at once. “I sent a note,” he said as nonchalantly as he could manage. “Did the boy not find you? I said I’d fix whatever damage my mule did to your lord’s dray.”

  As pathetic as his initial parry was, she nearly laughed. She enjoyed playing this kind of game with him, though they seemed to be playing them less often of late. “You did, but there’s more to atone for than a split wagon wheel.” She put her hand on her belly, cupping it in a gesture she’d seen so many women with child perform. “You did, after all, avail yourself of my lord’s hospitality for some time. And there are the dead goats to consider.”

  The girls stared openly at each other now, edging backward, their eyebrows pinching, which was the most emotion that two highborn women from the northern kingdom were likely to share. Emre, meanwhile, burst into a fit of laughter. As the girls bowed their pretty heads and disappeared into the throng, Emre stared at Çeda. “Goats?”

  “Dozens, dead by your hand!”

  “Well, I’m sure they deserved it.”

  “Agreed,” she replied. “They should mind whom they butt.”

  He gave a barking laugh. Seyhan, meanwhile, was speaking with a woman in a once-lavish abaya, one of his most loyal customers, a master chef for one of Blackfire Gate’s richest lords. He frowned deeply at Çeda and Emre. “Go!” he said, shooing them away with fluttering hands. “You’re worse than thieves, the both of you!”

  As he turned back to the chef, Emre rolled his eyes and crawled under the stall. “He’s got a shine for that one,” Emre said, eyeing the old, bent-backed spice merchant.

  “Seyhan?” Çeda asked, stifling a laugh. “Well, good for him!”

  Emre began weaving through the crowd toward the scent merchants’ old fort. “You don’t know the half of it.” Already the heavy breeze carried the scents of rose and jasmine and sandalwood, and more filled the air the farther they walked. “I defy you to name a man in Sharakhai who’s more deserving of a bit of time stuffing the pigeon.”

  She slapped his arm. “You’re disgusting.” She glanced back at Seyhan, who was smiling at the woman again. “Could you imagine them, though? They’re likely to have the Silver Spears at their door.”

  “Yeah, wondering who’s being murdered.”

  A long laugh burst from Çeda, calling the attention of the crowd. When the patrons had returned to the business of barter and trade, Emre spoke in a low voice, only for her. “And the White Wolf, was she victorious?”

  Her reply was every bit as prudent as his. “She did well enough from what I hear.”

  The relief in his expression was touching. “That’s good,” he said. “Is there another reason you came, then, other than to chase away the fine, smooth-skinned women of Mirea, that is?”

  “Those thinly veiled harlots needed chasing,” she shot back, “and can’t I come just to see where your fortunes have led you this week?”

  He slapped a hand over his heart. “You wound me! I’ve been at the stall for ages.”

  “Three months . . .”

  “As I said, ages!”

  Part of her wanted to laugh, but there was something about the fight with Haluk today—her near loss, if she was being honest—that was making her strangely sentimental. “We hardly see each other anymore.”

  After sidestepping a shoeless, sprinting gutter wren—a girl who reminded Çeda of running through the bazaar in the same pell-mell fashion—Emre bowed his head, allowing her the point. “Ships passing in a sandstorm.”

  She shrugged. She could hardly throw stones given how little time she spent in their shared home these days. “We should amend that.”

  He nodded, glancing back toward Seyhan’s stall, which was all but swallowed by the crowd. “True, we should, but—”

  “The master of the pits came to me today,” Çeda interrupted, realizing she should wait until they had more privacy but wanting to know Emre’s answer before she left the market.

  “Oh?” Emre said.

  “There’s a bit of a run needed.”

  “A run?”

  She leaned closer and spoke softly. “Through the shadows.”

  One eyebrow rose. “When?”

  “Seven days,” she said pointedly.

  “Seven days,” he repeated, glancing over Çeda’s shoulder to the passing crowd. He leaned in too. “On Beht Zha’ir?”

  She nodded, almost imperceptibly.

  His eyes scanned the crowd as though he expected the Silver Spears to
come rushing through the spice market to take them to Tauriyat, but the look soon faded and he met Çeda’s eyes with a strange mixture of boyish excitement and poorly hidden fear. “It’s been a while, Çeda.”

  “Like I said, we’ve seen too little of one another lately.”

  Emre leaned in closer, and said most earnestly, “Tell me true, will there be goats involved?”

  She laughed. “No goats, gods willing.”

  “More’s the pity.” Once more, he bowed his head with a flourish. “And yet, despite your poor standing, I place my heart in your hands.”

  They passed through a stone archway and into the ruins of an old fort that had long since surrendered to the ever-growing market. The sun was high and shone straight down, making the perfume stalls seem to glow. All around, men and women stood beside bright glass globes filled with scented water. The bare stone walls of the fort’s interior were stark, bordering on grim, but it didn’t seem to hurt business any. It was the place one went to find the most wondrous scents in all the Five Kingdoms. Many high lords and ladies could be found here, running clear glass stoppers over their wrists, marveling at the scents applied. Young boys and girls wandered among the crowd, descending quickly upon newcomers. Each held dozens of strips of thin wood.

  “Sir,” they beckoned Emre, “the scent of cypress or fir or clove. What better to bring joy to the lovely dove upon your arm?”

  “Dear lady,” they called to Çeda, “amber for a woman as beautiful as those freshly polished stones. Or lavender. Or lemon balm. See for yourself; my master’s scents are the finest in all the Great Shangazi.”

  Çeda beckoned one of them closer, a girl with jet black hair and intense eyes the color of unpolished jade. “Come, then, come.” It had been years since she’d bought a vial for herself, and she had more than a bit of change filling her purse.

  The girl ran up with a smile of practiced joy. “Now that I see you close, my lady, vetiver it must be, a thing to make you smile on a day filled with clouds, a thing to brighten—”

  Çeda laughed, waving her hands to indicate she was willing to try it and the girl could stop laying it on so thick. But before she could speak, a bustle arose from the far end of the enclosed fort, where several merchants stood near an expensively dressed man. The patron was not only tall, but imposing, and he wore bright red robes cut in the newest Malasani style—loose along the sleeves and tight down the body. He might be a lord of Malasan, or a caravan master, perhaps even a prince. Two women, young enough that they might have been his daughters, trailed behind him, chatting gaily with one another.

  Çeda saw through them immediately.

  They were careful, but she saw them scanning the space, measuring those closest before moving on to those farther away. They looked for weapons first, and then watched the faces of those gathered, as if memorizing what they saw. When the one in a flowing yellow dress spotted Çeda, she stopped for a moment. The two of them locked eyes, and Çeda suddenly found her heart beating like it did before a bout in the pits.

  “What is it?” Emre asked.

  Çeda shook her head and looked away lest the woman sense something amiss.

  Emre’s words died on his lips. He’d sensed it as well now—a strangeness, something surely yet inexplicably wrong.

  Before Çeda could move, the sound of wooden wheels clattering over stone came from behind. Someone shouted, though what was said was lost in a terrible clatter of heavy wood as it rattled against the stones of the old fort. Çeda turned. The opening before her, the one she and Emre had used to enter the fort, had just been cut off by some massive contraption of stacked logs. The high sound of hammers pounding—metal on metal—came from somewhere beyond it.

  Dust sifted down from above, rays of sunlight cutting through it. Conversation vanished like crows before a storm. Many simply stared at the barrier with looks of confusion or worry. But not the two women. One of them remained near her lord. The other ran for the only other passageway out of the fort, but before she’d taken two steps toward it, another massive set of timbers rolled into place, wedging itself almost perfectly into the opening. Again the sound of hammers pounding came from the opposite side.

  The woman—how she’d hidden it from sight Çeda had no clue—was suddenly holding a dark sword in her hand, a shamshir made of nearly black metal. An ebon blade; a weapon only the Blade Maidens bore. The man must be important indeed to demand a pair of Maidens as escorts.

  A shadow cast along the stones near Çeda’s feet drew her attention upward. Far above, along the ramparts, were the sun-backed silhouettes of four men wearing black turbans and veils across their faces. They were muscling something up and over the edge of the stone walls.

  Bladders. Massive, unwieldy, leather bladders, tipping end over end, falling from the ramparts down toward the crowd. They burst against the stones, splashing something clear and viscous over half the gathered crowd. The smell of lamp oil filled the enclosed space, choking the nose and throat and drowning out all others scents, even the perfume. The men had clearly been targeting the lord and the Blade Maidens; Çeda and Emre were far enough back to avoid being doused by the lamp oil.

  Spice merchants, patrons, and hawkers alike screamed and shouted, eyes wide, staring around as if demons were about to spring forth from the stones. “Stand away!” someone called. “Stand away!” Though where one might do so, Çeda had no idea.

  It had only begun to register who the men above were and what they meant to do when one of the Maidens took two long strides toward the far wall, ebon sword in hand. She launched herself from one perfume stall, which rattled as she leapt toward an exposed beam, a remnant of the floor that had once stood above them. Landing lightly on the beam, she used her momentum to launch herself like a sling stone. She flew toward a bare lip of stone and again propelled herself, leaping higher and higher and higher.

  When her momentum slowed at last, she took one final leap. Arcing her body like a drawn bow, she drew a black-as-night dagger from somewhere in her right sleeve and drove it deep between two stones an arm’s reach short of the lip above. A ringing sound like shearing metal resonated throughout the old fort.

  By the gods, nearly forty feet in the blink of an eye, and she’d cleverly chosen a place where there was a wide gap between the veiled men. Two of them moved toward her while the remaining pair dropped one more ungainly bladder, again targeting the far left corner of the fort, where the second Maiden was using the tips of her fingers to test the stone. The bladder burst off target, but the Maiden ignored it in any case. She seemed to have found what she was looking for, for she stood and stared at the space her fingertips had just brushed. Then she took one stride forward, spun, and sent a vicious back kick against the stone, releasing a powerful shout, a kiai, that Çeda felt in her chest.

  The wall shuddered, and a bit of stone crumbled away from the point of impact but didn’t otherwise seem affected. She kicked again and again, each as powerful as the last, the stone flaking further and further. With each kick came another kiai that resonated somewhere deep inside Çeda.

  Above, the veiled forms had moved to engage the suspended Blade Maiden, who was holding herself with one hand against the lip of the stone wall, legs spread wide, the sides of her feet somehow gaining purchase. The men wielded curving shamshirs against her, but the Maiden’s ebon blade met their blows with frightening ease.

  The gathered merchants and patrons were only now starting to understand what was happening. Children cried in fear, flocking toward their parents like goslings. A group of men were heaving their weight against the timbers in an attempt to push their way out, to no avail. A woman had taken out a studded cudgel, but seemed to have no idea what to do with it.

  Amidst all the madness, the lord the Maidens protected stood with such tranquility it made Çeda go cold. A man from the eastern end of the city might demand an escort of two Maidens, but how rare for one of thos
e lordlings to be so calm. The man met Çeda’s eyes, perhaps sensing her stare.

  That was when Çeda realized how wrong she’d been. He was not merely calm, but serene, utterly sure he was in no danger whatsoever.

  This man was no visiting lord. He was one of the Twelve Kings.

  Not ten paces from Çeda, in the scurry and scuttle of the spice market, a King of Sharakhai stood, disguising himself as some wealthy lord, though why he would do such a thing she had no idea.

  The King looked away, back to the swordfight above. The Maiden had gained the parapet and was now trading blows with the men. Their swords rang like a blacksmith’s hammer, the sound amplified in the enclosed space. Meanwhile, the other Maiden was kicking the wall over and over and over, falling into some arcane rhythm Çeda couldn’t understand but could somehow sense. The stone upon which she centered her attentions crumbled further, cracks forming around its edges.

  Without knowing when it had happened, Çeda realized she had her kenshar gripped tightly in her right hand. She took one step toward the King, preparing to charge, to run the knife across his throat. She hardly felt Emre grab her wrist—the one holding the knife—hardly felt him spinning her around to face him.

  “What are you doing?” he hissed. “You’ll be killed.”

  Çeda broke his grip with a sharp lift and twist of her arm. He tried grabbing her again, but she snatched his wrist and spun him into a nearby corner—the only dry space that remained. “Stay back, Emre.”

  She’d only just turned back around when something bright entered her field of vision from above—a torch, dropping like a sliver of the sun. The torch touched the spreading pool of lamp oil, and flames spread from the point of impact with a whoosh. It shoved Çeda away, and she cringed from it lest she be burned by the initial burst.

  I can still reach the King.

  Behind her, she heard the crash of glass, the splash of liquid over carpet and cobblestones, the sound of screaming as people caught fire.

  I can still reach him.