Twelve Kings in Sharakhai

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  She passed the Way of Jewels, the Black Pillar, and Bent Man, the ancient bridge that crossed the dry remains of the River Haddah. Then, as she neared the slave block, she abandoned the Trough for a shortcut to the southern harbor; a shortcut she and Emre had been using since they were gutter wrens.

  As she headed down a narrow alley, she trilled the call of the amberlark: four rising notes followed by a long coo. The calls of the asirim came louder. Some were close, she realized. Very close.

  One never knew the path they would choose. That fell to the Reaping King and his whims. One never knew how many would come, either. Some months it was a bare few; on other nights their calls resounded throughout the city from the rich eastern edges to the slums of the west end.

  She trilled again, waiting, listening, fighting down the urge to cower behind a barrel and wait for the night to pass as another asir called, this one much closer than the last.

  Then she heard it, some distance away though clear enough—the call of another amberlark.

  She knew it was Emre. But the call had been very weak, as if he’d barely managed it through his pain. Or fear. Or both.

  The alley ended in a stone lip. Beyond was a canal that ran dry most of the year. The drop was steep, but she leapt with abandon, trusting to the adichara petal to strengthen her legs and dull the pain of her landing.

  She trilled again, hearing no reply, but as she listened she did hear the sound of footsteps. They shuffled along the ground somewhere above her. She froze, breathless, sure that one of the asirim had found her.

  THE ASIR’S FOOTSTEPS ABOVE RECEDED, and Çeda’s heart began to beat again. But then a hungry wail—an aching, utterly inhuman sound Çeda had never heard the likes of, even from the grisly asirim—broke the stillness. Çeda cringed, covered her ears with her hands. Somewhere, a door crashed in, and Çeda went rigid with fear. She couldn’t catch her breath. A man with a croaking voice called fervent prayers to the twin moons with ever-increasing rapidity. “Choose me, Tulathan,” he intoned, “that your light may shine upon me all the brighter. Choose me, Rhia, that I may serve the Kings in the farther fields.”

  Surely to that man, such prayers were not misplaced. In his eyes he would be given a special place not only at the foot of the Kings, but of the first gods as well. So the Kannan, the book of laws penned by the Kings themselves, proclaimed. Çeda didn’t know what to believe, nor did she care just then, for a moment later, a wet thud cut his voice short. After a time the footsteps approached her, as did an intermittent dragging sound.

  Çeda crouched beneath the bridge. Made herself as small as possible.

  She waited as the footsteps dragged over the stone bridge above her. The shadow that fell onto the bed of the canal was close enough for her to reach out and touch, and it made her feel as though the asir could do the same to her. It never stopped its shambling gait, however, and it moved on, dragging the man it had been granted by the Reaping King out toward the blooming fields. Çeda’s reaction was craven, but she couldn’t think of the man’s loss, only the relief at not being chosen as he had.

  By the light of the moons she could see well along the canal but not what lay beneath the bridges. Those were nearly pitch black, and it took long, terror-filled moments for her eyes to penetrate that intense darkness. At last, she caught movement beneath the next bridge, only twenty paces farther on. It must be Emre. She wanted to go to him, but fear still rooted her in place.

  Finally, when the dragging sounds had faded and her muscles had unseized, she ran low to the next bridge and, gods be praised, found Emre stretched out underneath, holding his side. In the moonlight a few paces farther sprawled a man wearing the simple clothes one would find in the desert and a turban that, even muted as it was beneath the light of the twin moons, was clearly red. Tattoos marked his forehead, the corners of his eyes, and the palms of his hands, tattoos that would tell—if one knew how to read them—the story not only of his life, but that of his family and his tribe. It was the turban, though, that marked him as someone from the desert. The tribesmen, if they chose to give up the life of wandering and settle in Sharakhai, were forbidden to wear red turbans or thawbs. Their women relinquished their bright red dresses and veils, embellished with beaten coins and golden embroidery. Any other colors were permitted, but red was set aside for those garbed for war. That was the price the Kings demanded for coming to their city, a sign that they had left their old lives behind, that their aggression lay behind them as well.

  Why by the grace of the desert gods would one of the wandering tribes have come here? And why would he have attacked Emre?

  She had no time to wonder further before a dark form blurred before her very eyes. Something heavy crashed onto the dry bed of the canal. Another asir, she realized.

  She shrank back into the shadows beneath the bridge. Her lips trembled as her mouth began to water at a strange, sickly sweet smell that filled the air. It reminded her of withered apples just starting to turn. It was all she could do not to turn and flee. But Emre was but a whisper away. She couldn’t leave him.

  The asir stalked forward and stooped down over the fallen man, running fingers with black nails over his chest. The thing had long, emaciated arms and legs, and its head looked somehow too large for its body. Its hair was stringy and hung in matted clumps about its shoulders. It looked, in fact, not so different from the starving children she had seen in the slums, except instead of the skin the color of ginger, the asir’s was the mottled black of rotten fruit.

  The asir leaned close. Çeda could hear it sniffing along the dead man’s neck, and then, as quickly as it had come, the asir threw the limp form over its shoulder, climbed the nearby wall of the canal, and was gone.

  Gods protect me, Çeda said to herself, waiting for the sounds of the asirim to fade. Then she knelt next to Emre and whispered to the darkness. “Emre.”

  For a moment she feared she was too late. He wasn’t moving, and it seemed he was hardly breathing. If death hadn’t already arrived, the lord of all things was surely on his way. But when she shook him again, he stirred and looked up at her. His eyes couldn’t seem to focus. “Have you come to take me?”

  “No, Emre. It’s me. Are you all right?”

  He blinked. His eyes narrowed in on hers at last. “Çeda?”

  “Emre, are you hurt?”

  His only reply was to raise his hand from his ribs and show her the blood that blackened his hand and forearm. Çeda was no stranger to blood, but her gut twisted in a thousand knots to see Emre like this, even more so from the look of innocence on his face, which reminded her of a boy not yet ready for the ways of the world.

  “Can you stand?”

  He grimaced and raised his arm. After she’d levered him up to his feet and started to lead him away, he stopped her and said through gritted teeth, “The satchel.”

  “To the far fields with your bloody satchel.”

  “Get it, Çeda, or I’m as good as dead anyway.”

  It lay on the ground among the forgotten detritus of the spring rains. She picked it up—it was light, at least—and slung it over her shoulder. In a way it was good she had the satchel. It meant Emre had made the pickup at the southern harbor. He just hadn’t been able to make the drop as planned. At least now she could get it back to Osman.

  Together they headed southeast. It was the opposite direction from their home in Roseridge, but he’d never be able to climb out of the canal, and it only grew deeper the farther it wound toward the heart of the city. But ahead there was a log they’d seen a dozen gutter wrens levering into place in late spring—an easy way for them to get out if they ever needed it. Despite being an easy exit, the log was not overly thick, and it was difficult for Emre to find his balance. He resorted to straddling the log with Çeda pushing and supporting him from behind to get him up to ground level.

  Once there, Çeda slipped Emre’s arm over her should
er. He sucked his breath through gritted teeth at the pain, but made no mention of it otherwise. He didn’t have to. She could feel it in the way he moved, and she could feel his blood seeping through the light cloth of her thawb.

  “We’ll be home soon,” she said, though it was far from the truth. At the speed they were going, it would take hours. She thought about stopping at someone’s home, someone she could trust, and holing up for a day or two. But whom could she trust with this? No one. The chance of word spreading was simply too great, if not from the people she entrusted, then their children, or their neighbors, or their friends.

  No, she had to get Emre home before the sun rose. Without aid.

  As if sensing her discomfort, the asirim redoubled their calls, the long, mournful song of the dead for the living they were about to claim as their own.

  Please, Rhia, guide me.

  She’d no sooner pleaded to the goddess than Emre grew heavier. He was blacking out. The loss of blood, the effort of movement when his body wasn’t ready for it. She tried to keep him up, and she might have been able to do so for a while with the petals’ help, but what good would that do in the end? She couldn’t carry him all the way home. She needed to find a cart—a mule too if she was able—and bring him home. She laid him down gently and turned to look for one. And that’s when she saw dark movement ahead.

  The blood drained from her face. Cold sweat gathered on her skin.

  She should have moved faster. She should have carried Emre, taken him as far as she could before looking for a cart. But now it was too late, for one of the asirim stood in the road ahead, twenty paces away. Twenty paces, and it still seemed close enough to reach out and rake its blackened claws across her throat.

  The urge to run was so strong that a child’s whine escaped her. She wanted to flee, to scream, but she couldn’t. She was rooted to the spot, as if a spike had been driven down through her and into the dry earth below.

  The asir stalked forward, its head tilted like a desert lynx listening for prey. The golden crown it wore glinted with the movement. A crown! Why any of the asir would wear such a thing she had no idea.

  It wore no clothes. Its skin was tightened and shriveled. It smelled like a charnel, but there were faint notes of fruit like fig and plum, which made it all the worse. Çeda gagged once, twice, the sound echoing in the emptiness of the street, but she remained as rigid as she could. As rigid as the stone beneath the desert.

  When it came within arm’s reach, it stopped. It leaned forward, sniffing the air. Tasting it. She could see its blackened skin by the light of Tulathan and Rhia, how tightly it was pulled over its bones. She could see yellowed eyes and tight, black lips pulled back to reveal receded gums and long, chipped teeth.

  It blinked and frowned, jaw jutting forward. It seemed confused, though why, Çeda couldn’t begin to guess. It stretched forward, jaundiced eyes widening as its hand reached for her face. She willed herself to move, to back away, to fend its hand away, but she couldn’t so much as twitch as its desiccated fingers brushed her cheek, as they pulled the veil from her face. Never had Çeda felt more exposed. It sniffed her and then, almost tenderly, licked her neck where her blood pulsed most. She felt so very strange, like they were a twisted version of King and Blade Maiden. She dearly wished she could move or scream or fight, or feel anything but utter submission to this wretched creature. But she could not. She was well and truly trapped.

  The asir began to speak. Or, Çeda thought it was speaking. It was difficult to tell. Its voice was soft as spindrift at first. She heard a word here. A word there. Unmade and betrayed and fallen.

  But then she heard one distinct phrase. Rest will he ’neath twisted tree . . . And Çeda’s breath caught in her throat. Those words . . . She’d seen them. Read them.

  Her thoughts, and the asir’s words, were cut off by the crack of a whip and another nearby wail, so close Çeda could feel the hairs stand up on her arms and the back of her neck.

  The creature looked back the way it had come, then returned its attention to Çeda. It touched her forehead with an outstretched finger, pulled Çeda nearer, and kissed that very spot. Gods, she tried to recoil, but she was rooted in place. To be kissed by one of these creatures . . . It made her insides churn. And its lips! They were dry, but there was a strange warmth to them, a thing she hadn’t expected, like maggots in a nearly finished meal.

  The asir shuffled past, and slowly, as the sounds of its retreat faded, she was able to move again. Immediately, she pulled Emre to his feet and maneuvered him over a low wall. The wall marked the edge of a yard before a large, two-story home. At the center of the yard was a fig tree, and it was there that Çeda dragged Emre.

  No sooner had she brought him to rest on the far side of the trunk than she saw forms gliding along the street. The moment Çeda saw them, her nostrils flared. Her breath came short and shallow. She felt like a maned wolf watching a desert hare, crouched and waiting for the right time to charge. It was a primal feeling, one born of fear and rage and impotence, one rooted in the bloody history of the lithe forms before her. It was a feeling she couldn’t explain, nor even fully define, not even to herself, for these were Blade Maidens, black-robed and moving with the grace of a desert asp.

  A dozen of them strode through the night, two by two, as if they and they alone ruled Sharakhai. Çeda couldn’t help but think of the Maidens in the perfume merchants’ fort, the ones who’d saved their King-in-disguise. Here were more, surely escorting King Sukru on his rounds. Indeed, such a large escort was justified after the Moonless Host had come so close to killing one of the Kings.

  It comforted Çeda to know that the Kings might feel fear. And it made her dream. If only she might find herself closer to the Kings. The promises she might fulfill.

  The very thought spurred a memory of a dark blade, of a river’s edge, but it was so deeply buried it refused to fully surface. It left her feeling impotent and scared. They shouldn’t have been caught out like this. They should be safe at home.

  Her thoughts were broken by a tall form striding in the wake of the Maidens. He wore fine, bright clothes and a crown not unlike the one the asir had worn. He strode not with grace, as the Maidens did, but with the gait of the proud, the entitled. It was Sukru, the Reaping King, who legend said was the King who’d been granted the honor of selecting those whom the asirim would kill on the night of Beht Zha’ir. He roamed the city, marking those precious few who’d be given the honor. How was a matter unknown to most. Some said he cracked his whip against the door of the home he’d chosen and the asirim would take someone from within. Others said Sukru would peer into the darkness of the night—beyond doors and walls—and whisper the names of those he found worthy. Others claimed he wandered the city in the days leading up to Beht Zha’ir, disguised, and touched the skin of those the asirim should come for, and he wandered with them on this night merely to shepherd them through the city. Çeda knew the truth, though. She’d seen it with her own eyes years ago: Sukru marking a door with his bloody hand.

  Behind Sukru came six Maidens more, each with a hand on the pommel of her sword. Çeda was nearly ready to offer a word of thanks to the twin moons—for Emre’s sake if not her own—when one at the rear, the one closest to Çeda’s position, stopped. She turned and scanned the yard, her eyes moving over the place where Çeda huddled with Emre. Part of Çeda hoped the Maiden would come. She wanted desperately to cross swords with one of them, as she’d dreamed so long of doing, but to do so now would be to throw away lives, hers and Emre’s both. Whatever reason the asir may have had in sparing her life, she was sure the Maidens would not be so kind.

  As if he’d heard her thoughts, Emre’s breath caught. He stirred, and Çeda feared he would wake, that he’d call out.

  But he didn’t. And finally, bless the gods of the desert themselves, the Blade Maiden turned and continued in the wake of the others.

  Çeda remained un
der the fig tree for a long while. She waited for the wails of the asirim to fade. Waited for Rhia, the golden moon, to trek across the indigo sky. Waited for Emre to rest. He was breathing easily, at last, and she would press her luck no further than she already had.

  Finally, after Rhia had well and truly set, she woke Emre. His eyes fluttered open with a soft groan, and together they made their way through the city.

  Tulathan had followed her sister, and the sun was brightening the eastern horizon by the time they reached home. Once she’d helped him up the stairs, she laid Emre onto his bed and set the satchel beneath it before fetching water and bandages. She made him drink as much of the water as he could before cleaning his wounds—two sword cuts across his chest and one on his left arm—and then set to stitching them. She was bone tired. The effects of the petals had worn off, and she was slipping down into the lethargy that always followed, and this time it was deeper than any she could remember.

  The realization that she’d very nearly lost Emre sustained her, though. She set the stitches quickly and efficiently and then bandaged his wounds, and finally, after a kiss to his forehead—not so different from the one the asir had given her—she left him to rest. Only then did she allow herself to slink to her room like a beaten dog. She wanted nothing more than to fall into the embrace of her dreams, but there was a question that still needed answering.

  She pulled back the horsehair blanket hanging above her bed. From the alcove hidden behind it she retrieved her mother’s book. Along with the silver locket, it was one of the very few things she had to remind her of her mother’s graceful hands, her winsome smile. Çeda used it to press the petals of the adichara. She flipped carefully to the back pages of the book and came to the one she was looking for.

  As she stared at it, something inside her opened up and yawned, wider and wider, threatening to swallow her whole. She thought perhaps she’d remembered it wrong, that the words had somehow been a figment of her imagination—she’d been so caught in the spell of the asir, after all. But she hadn’t misremembered. She hadn’t made them up. Here they were, staring at her from the pages of her mother’s book.