Twelve Kings in Sharakhai

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  She swallowed hard, and she was suddenly grateful that a week had passed since her conversation with Sümeya. She’d taken Zaïde’s advice. She’d rested herself. She’d drunk Zaïde’s brewed concoctions, which tasted more than a little like Dardzada’s. She ate, sparingly at first, but as the pain in her right arm faded, her appetite returned, and she ate bread and hummus and even a bit of meat. She felt a different woman, and yet, standing here before Yusam, she felt undone.

  Had her mother truly faced these men?

  For so long after her mother’s death, she’d been angry with her for leaving, angry she had done something so futile. But now, standing before one of them, she understood a part of what her mother had gone through. And she knew there was more to Ahya’s actions than Çeda had ever realized. Çeda knew so little of the things her mother had weighed before deciding to go to Tauriyat the night of her death, or of the potential consequences if she hadn’t. It was this realization—a link to her mother—that brought Çeda back to herself, to regain a bit of her lost confidence. “The draught from the petals is sold in the secret places of Sharakhai.”

  “And who would you sell your petals to?”

  “Why do you need to know?”

  His voice grew sharper. “Stealing petals from the twisted trees is forbidden. As is the selling of their distillations.”

  “There are dozens who do so. Taking one of them will simply create an opening for another, leaving you no better off than when you started.”

  “I will have his name.”

  “Forgive me, My King, but you’ve granted me this audience for a reason, have you not? You wonder if I might join the ranks of the Maidens.”

  “What of it?” he snapped.

  “I understand each Maiden is granted a boon of their choosing, either the day they join or on their naming day. If you accept me then grant me this gift: the name of the one I sold petals to. It’s nothing to you and means much to me.”

  He stared at her more intently then, concentrating, and Çeda could feel her will slipping. But she stood resolute, and Yusam’s gaze relaxed. Then he stepped forward and held his hand out to her. “Very well, Çedamihn. But should you prove unworthy”—he motioned toward the mere with his other hand—“I will have the name and your life.”

  She stepped forward and placed her hand in his. The skin of his palm was rough, like the pads on a cat’s paw.

  “Who was your mother?” he asked as he led her toward the mere.

  She considered lying, but too many in Sharakhai knew her mother’s name. “Ahyanesh,” she replied.

  “And her tribe?”

  “Masal,” she lied, the very same lie her mother had used when she was young. She knew that her mother had come from somewhere else in the desert—she’d admitted as much to Çeda once—but she had never said which tribe she was truly from. You’re too young, she would always say. When you’re older, I’ll tell you.

  “Ah,” Yusam said, sounding disappointed. “I had hoped, little one.”

  Hoped for what? But then she realized. Yusam had hoped that she might be of his line, related to him in some distant way. She wanted to vomit.

  “Apparently not, Excellence.”

  He shrugged. “The gods will play their games.”

  “And from which tribe do you hail?”

  This was hidden knowledge. Still, she thought Yusam might be of the mood to tell her, but he merely smiled and said, “Not Masal,” and then asked, “And your father?”

  “I know not, Eminence, as you’re well aware.”

  “Such a sharp tongue.” He smiled a wicked smile. “Take care it doesn’t cut your throat.”

  They came to the edge of the mere, where Çeda looked down, expecting to see its bed, for the water was crystal clear. Instead she saw a bottomless thing that threatened to pull her in. She became dizzy as she stared into it. She leaned forward, caught by its spell.

  Yusam grabbed her by the shoulders and steadied her. “The draw of the mere is strong, especially for one so young.” He tugged at her wrist. “Kneel, child.”

  She did, eyes fixed on the depthless vision before her. The cloth of Yusam’s khalat rustled as he moved to the opposite side of the pool and knelt. She saw this from her periphery only, for no matter how she tried she could not withdraw her gaze from the water. Yusam leaned forward. His knuckles whitened as he gripped the coping and brought his face a mere breath away from the surface of the water.

  As he stared down into the depths, he murmured in cavernous tones. Çeda could pick out no words among the hills and valleys of his endless, rhythmic utterances. It didn’t feel as though he were looking down into a pool of water; it felt as though he were staring into her soul, into her past and into her future. As if he was looking deep within her, pulling her apart to see what she was made of, judging her worthiness for a place in the House of Maidens.

  A burst of fear surged through her. He would see her mother’s actions, her trips to Saliah, her harvesting of the petals on Beht Zha’ir. He would see all that Çeda had done as well. Her own trips to the blooming fields, her own spying on the Kings. And when he did, all would be lost.

  She remained there for a long while, chained by the magic of the mere, or perhaps of the King himself, and the more time that passed, the more her insides churned, the more she wished to be free of the scrutiny. It became so intense she nearly confessed to Yusam, if only to be free of the way he was toying with her.

  She heard someone screaming, and finally pulled out of the spell. She’d thought she, herself, was the one screaming, her fears given voice, condemning herself even further before this judgment King. But it wasn’t her. It was Yusam.

  He still leaned over the water, gripping the coping stones so tightly his tendons looked like crossbow strings. With trembling arms he pushed himself up as though exhausted. His face was white as bone. His eyes stared sightlessly for a long while, until finally he saw Çeda. His lips trembled. His eyes, shrouded within deep sockets, were red. He stared at her with a look of deep regret. And fear.

  It gave her a sense of satisfaction knowing that the Kings could fear as Yusam did now, and that she might be the cause of it. But then the look faded, and his eyes hardened.

  Here it comes. My pronouncement.

  “Leave,” he said.

  “My King?”

  “Leave this place!”

  Çeda stood, her entire body shaking with nervous excitement. Yusam was ignoring her, assuming that she would obey his order without question. I should take him now, she thought. She should take her hidden knife and plunge it into his back. Kill one of the Kings in his own palace; the mere thought filled her with energy. He would probably order her death anyway, so why not take him first? Her death would follow in retribution, but still, it might be enough to honor her mother in the eyes of the gods, to redeem them both in some small way. But then her mother’s hidden poem came to her before she could act.

  While far afield,

  His love unsealed,

  ’Til Tulathan does loom;

  Then petals’ dust,

  Like lovers’ lust,

  Will draw him toward his tomb.

  The words were burned into her memory. She knew it spelled out how to bring down one of the Kings. She didn’t know which, or just how it could be done, but if she were patient, she would eventually tease out the answers. And it wasn’t merely this one riddle that transfixed her. It was the certainty that there were more. I’ve found four, Ahya had told Saliah. Four is not twelve, Saliah had replied. Where were the other three Ahya had found? And where were the other eight? If there was some small chance that Çeda could stay in the service of the Kings, then there was a chance she could unlock the riddles. Finding those poems had been her mother’s life’s work, secreting them away so that she or others could use them against the Kings. And if Çeda waited, she could plan better
, protect those she loved, or at least give them warning. If she killed Yusam now, they would pay a price for her crime.

  Yusam lifted his head, quivering, his eyes aflame in anger, but Çeda spoke before he could. “My King,” she said. “I know not what you saw, but know that I will protect you. You and the House of Kings. I was not raised in the House of Maidens, nor Tauriyat, nor Goldenhill. I know not who my father is. But I know that blood is blood.” She knelt, bowed her head, and cupped her hands toward him—an offering, plain and simple. “I give to you what little the gods have given me.”

  When she rose she saw that much of the anger had left his eyes, replaced by a look that said he was weighing her words, weighing her against whatever he’d seen, and was clearly having trouble deciding what to do. If she’d learned anything in the pits, it was when to press her advantage and when to retreat. Before the Jade-eyed King could say another word, she stood and left.

  He was silent, but as she passed through the garden and into the palace proper, she heard a long growl from one of the great cats.

  It sounded like a plea. Or a lament.

  She walked blindly through the palace, already doubting herself, until the steward found her and led her back to the entrance. The sun had set, but large braziers lit the carriage circle in its stead, casting wicked shadows against the bronze leopards at its center. Çeda climbed back into the carriage, where Zaïde and Sümeya still sat. The doors of the palace boomed shut. As the driver called “Hup!” and the two horses lurched into motion, Çeda thought surely Zaïde would ask what had happened, or Sümeya would snap at her, but neither said a thing. Meetings with the Kings were clearly sacred, not meant to be shared, and for this she was mightily relieved.

  As the araba wheeled around and prepared to head back down the winding road to the base of Tauriyat, the palace doors opened once more, and who but the King himself should step out.

  Yusam, looking haggard and troubled, strode down the steps and across the stones toward the araba. The driver reined the horses to a stop as Sümeya looked at the King, then Çeda, then the King again.

  Zaïde stepped down, Sümeya followed, and Çeda came last, all three bowing their heads.

  “Rise,” Yusam said. He stared into Zaïde’s eyes as the firelight glinted off his golden crown. “You may have my answer now if you wish, Matron.”

  “Of course, O King,” Zaïde replied.

  “This one pleases me,” he said. “You will take her in, our young Çedamihn Ahyanesh’ala. You will train her in the ways of the blade”—those jade eyes glanced sidelong at Çeda’s right arm—“though I suspect she may teach you as well.” And then he turned to Sümeya. “And you, Sümeya, will welcome her into your hand.”

  At this, Sümeya gasped. She gasped at a command from her King.

  It was something Çeda would never have expected, not from a woman like Sümeya. It spoke to how dearly she wished Çeda gone, wished her lost once more among the poorest corners of Sharakhai.

  The hand was the basic fighting unit of the Blade Maidens, five women who trained together, who knew one another intimately—fighting styles, their strengths, their weaknesses, their loves and dislikes. Yusam had commanded that Sümeya take Çeda into her hand, to train her, protect her, and give her everything she needed to benefit the interests of the Kings.

  The silence lengthened, Sümeya glowering at Çeda, clearly expecting her to refuse the King’s request. Çeda said nothing, however. Her silence put Emre in danger, but she could not turn down this opportunity. Yusam’s green eyes hardened, and Sümeya finally seemed to cobble together a handful of words. “Forgive me, O King, but Husamettín grants me my orders.”

  Yusam smiled, a humorless thing. “In this he will not deny me. You have been without your fifth for too long, and too long from the side of the Kings. It’s time you return.” He stepped in and kissed Sümeya’s forehead, a sight that brought Çeda immediately back to the night of Beht Zha’ir when the asirim’s strangely warm lips had been pressed to her own forehead. He’d been wearing a crown, as Yusam did now.

  Sehid-Alaz, Saliah had called him. Had that sad creature once been a King?

  “We will speak again,” Yusam said to Çeda.

  And with that he turned and strode away, his footsteps over the river stones filling the cool night air with a sound like breaking bones.

  WHEN THE ARABA CARRYING ÇEDA, ZAÏDE, and Sümeya returned to the House of Maidens, Sümeya leapt down while it was still moving and strode away, back straight and head held high. Zaïde lowered herself down carefully and led Çeda back to the infirmary. Çeda would eventually be given her own bed with Sümeya and the others from her hand, but for now she would sleep where Zaïde could keep a close eye on her convalescence.

  Only one woman was still in the infirmary, the one who’d been badly wounded. She lay there, bandaged and moaning, her eyelids fluttering like butterfly wings under the sedatives she’d been given.

  On the way back from Yusam’s palace, Çeda had tried and failed to understand why he’d acted as he had. Why assign Çeda to Sümeya’s hand? It must have been something he’d seen in the pool. He protected the Kings by detecting those who might mean them harm. She’d thought he had seen something horrible relating to her, but if he had, he wouldn’t have hesitated to kill her.

  What, then? What could he have seen? Perhaps not a vision of Çeda, but of someone else. Or a memory that haunted him?

  “Will I be allowed to leave?” Çeda asked as she sat on the edge of the bed.

  Zaïde lowered herself with a grimace and sat facing Çeda from the next bed over. “Not for some time, but eventually, if you please Sümeya, yes.”

  Çeda was already shaking her head. “I will never please Sümeya.”

  Zaïde’s lips thinned to a dark line. “I won’t lie to you. Sümeya is a harsh woman, a grim leader, and she’s still angry over the loss of her sister years ago, the woman she replaced as leader of her hand. She’s angry that Yusam has put you in the still-vacant position that Nayyan once held. And perhaps she’s right about all of these things. It will not be easy for you in the weeks ahead, but Sümeya respects honor. She respects effort. I know not the life you led before you came to my door, but I know a page has turned on that life. There is no going back, and if you try to leave again without permission”—Zaïde jutted her chin toward the window—“you will be brought back to the courtyard and lashed. Leave a second time and you’ll be stoned to death. Do you understand?”

  Çeda nodded. “I do.”

  “Do you truly?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, you don’t. You are not one of us, not yet. You know little of our ways, only what you’ve heard in the streets of Sharakhai, which, believe me, is poor education indeed. I knew this when I took you in, but now, after Yusam’s decision, I wonder if you’ll last the month. Sümeya is First Warden, the commander of the Maidens. She chose the other three in her hand personally. Yusam acted with the guidance of the mere and the best interests of the Kings in mind. But Sümeya will not see it that way. She will see only her lost sister, Nayyan, and you standing in her place. She will see Nayyan’s honor replaced with the morals of a thief caught stealing from the sacred groves. And she will use any excuse to punish you. I see you, Çeda. I see your will. I see your desire to leave, perhaps to speak to those who brought you here, or loved ones, or even enemies, but I tell you: Do not do it. I will not be able to protect you if you do.”

  “Why would you want to?” Çeda shot back.

  Zaïde raised her eyebrows, then she stood and looked down on Çeda with something akin to sadness. “Because, though you may not yet recognize it, you are blood of my blood.”

  No, I’m not. Çeda could only just believe the blood of Kings ran through her veins, but even if that was true, Çeda was not one of these women. Zaïde might have saved Çeda, she might even be Dardzada’s hidden ally in this place,
but that didn’t make them sisters, and Çeda had to remember that. Always.

  “Get some sleep,” Zaïde said as she moved away. “We’ll start early.”

  “What was she like?” Çeda asked before she’d taken two shuffling steps.

  “Who?”

  “The lost Maiden. Nayyan.”

  Zaïde considered this a moment, her back to Çeda. Then she turned, only enough so that Çeda could see the pensive look on her face. “She was a gifted woman. Ambitious. Bright. Beautiful, in her own way. She told stories from the old texts, tales of the Kings before the night of Beht Ihman, but in such a way that they came alive once more. She had a wonderful laugh and a wicked blade. She was First Warden before Sümeya. And she was lost to us.”

  “Lost how?”

  “No one knows. She was here in our House. She was to take a royal clipper to visit her family. But she never reached the ship. We searched the city and the desert for days, but no one ever found her. In the weeks that followed, no one spoke of replacing her in Sümeya’s hand.” Odd, Çeda thought, since Zaïde had said only yesterday that it was rare for vacancies in the Maidens’ ranks to last longer than the traditional seven days of mourning. “So revered was Nayyan that, even after Sümeya rose to First Warden, we honored her by leaving her a place in the hand. Once set, things have a way of remaining in place, and, well, it has been this way for eleven years now.”

  Eleven years . . . the same length of time since her mother died.

  “Why now?” Çeda asked. “Why would Yusam finally choose to replace her when no one has complained for eleven years?”

  Zaïde turned and faced Çeda squarely. “Perhaps he saw in you our salvation.”

  The words sent a chill down Çeda’s spine: our salvation.

  It wasn’t until Zaïde left, and Çeda lay down to sleep, that she realized she had no idea whose salvation Zaïde meant. The Kings? The Maidens? Sharakhai? Not knowing left Çeda with the feeling that there were more layers to Zaïde than she might have guessed.