Twelve Kings in Sharakhai

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

Three nights later, Çeda woke herself from sleep. She’d always been gifted in this way, sleeping easily and waking when she wished. She’d given most in the House of Maidens time to fall asleep.

  In the days since her audience with King Yusam, her fear for Emre had only grown. Tomorrow night, a welcoming feast was to be held for Çeda, when she would be presented to any of the Kings who chose to attend. She judged that Sümeya would wait at least until then to follow through with her threats, in case one of the other Kings denied Çeda entrance to the House of Maidens. But Çeda knew that, beyond tomorrow night, the danger only rose, so tonight it must be. Tonight, or the risks for Emre were just too high.

  She sat up in her bed and sniffed. The air smelled of henbane, surely from the Maiden sleeping soundly at the far end of the room. She changed as quietly as she could into one of the white dresses she’d been given, then pulled on her slippers and headed for the same window she’d used over a week ago. Outside, only Rhia’s half-moon hung in the sky. It made for an especially dark night, but she could see two Maidens walking along the curtain wall that surrounded the House of Maidens. They soon came to another length of wall, the one that intersected the much larger and lengthier wall separating the House of Kings proper from Sharakhai, the one that wrapped around the whole of Tauriyat. The sentry Maidens took stairs up to this common section and strode along the length of it, standing for a while over the main gates to the city.

  The punishment for leaving the House of Maidens was still fresh in her mind—a lashing in the courtyard for all to see—but she couldn’t remain here without warning Emre. Sümeya’s threat had been all too serious. Emre had to know that she was safe and that he must no longer ask for her along the Spear. He had to hide, even if that meant hiding himself among the Moonless Host for a time. Better with them by far than dead by Sümeya’s hand.

  Çeda watched a third Maiden meet the other two on the curtain wall. They spoke for a time, and Çeda thought she might be able to make a running leap along the ledge to the wall and slip over the other side before they saw her, but the Maidens parted again, two of them walking the walls while the third remained in place, watching the city.

  Minutes passed, stretching on and on into the night, while Çeda tried to discern some pattern to the Maidens’ patrols, including those who moved through the yard below, but she could see none. And the lone Maiden at the bend in the wall didn’t move.

  Thoughts of Emre being strung up like her mother, with cruel words cut into his skin, played through Çeda’s mind. A part of her, the weak part, the scared part, cautioned her to go back to bed, to try another night, but she tore up those thoughts like weeds before they could take root. She had to go now. Emre needed her.

  She stepped out onto the ledge and sidestepped along it, closer and closer to the curtain wall. Her white dress masked her somewhat against the stone of the building, but she was a mere ten paces from the Maiden now. All the Maiden need do was turn, and she would see Çeda plain as day.

  Two Maidens rode out from the stables below and into the courtyard. The clopping of the horse’s hooves sounded loud as kettledrums. They were headed toward the main gate, surely to head out into the city, but they would pass right by Çeda. She held perfectly still. She even held her breath—sure the women were about to notice her—when a ball of flame flew up and over the wall in a high arc, twisting like a broken piece of the sun. In the cool of the night Çeda could feel the heat of its passage. It crashed onto the far side of the yard. Fire sprayed and spread in the shape of a spearhead, some of it licking against the stables wall. The two maidens wheeled their horses around as a second ball of flame arced over the walls, then a third. One struck the center of the yard, making the horses scream. The other crashed onto the roof of the tallest of the Maidens’ seven buildings, the one with the stained glass windows and red clay tiles.

  Demon’s fire. Çeda had never seen it, but she’d read about it. Kundhun had alchemysts, and years ago they’d used demon’s fire against Sharakhai, hoping to take the city before the asirim could be brought to bear. The attack had been thwarted when King Besir, the King of Shadows, had appeared among them, killing their alchemysts one by one, and Azad, the King of Thorns, had slipped through their defenses to gut their general, stem to stern, and then fled, almost too fast for the eye to follow.

  A bell began to ring, then another, and another. A section of the wall across the courtyard from Çeda burst into flame as another projectile crashed against the wall walk and the battlements. The Maiden who’d been standing there leapt free just in time, rolling wide as flames licked down the stone and swelled near the base, bright as a sunrise.

  Attacks against the Kings were rare, but they happened, and with more regularity over these past few years. She had no idea why this one had been launched, nor why they would target the House of Maidens, one of the places that was sure to have the swiftest reprisal. But she knew that if she were going to leave, it would have to be now.

  After one deep breath, she ran and leapt for the wall. She landed, skidding on the wall walk. She stared across the fire at the Maiden on the far side, who watched Çeda with narrowed eyes. Çeda shrugged, an apology of sorts, then levered herself over the parapet and dropped.

  One last ball of fire arced high on the other side of the Maiden’s compound. Where it struck she didn’t know, but she heard a crash and a score or more horses being ridden through the opened gates. As the sound of galloping hooves and crisply called orders filled the air, Çeda snaked through the buildings of the old city and into the night.

  As she neared home, it was strangely quiet. The entire city was. The news must have spread. When things like this happened, the western quarter grew anxious. Few but the boldest went out on such nights, for the Maidens would soon be out, searching the Shallows, drawing blood, cracking skulls, doing whatever it took to find those who’d attacked the House of Maidens.

  Çeda heard a babe wailing as she reached the winding lane where she lived, but the babe was hushed quickly. There were no lamps lit in her sitting room, nor behind the curtained windows of hers or Emre’s rooms. When she reached the door, however, she checked the latch. Long ago they’d fixed it so that they could lift the latch and it would stick. If the latch was up, they’d know the other was still out. If the latch was down, they’d know either that the other had returned home, or that some other party had tried the door.

  The latch was down.

  Part of her wanted to believe that Emre was up there, but something told her he wasn’t. She opened the door and crept slowly up the stairs. Emre had fixed the steps so they made only the barest of creaks as one crept toward the landing above. She saw a flicker of light above—a candle perhaps, the light stabbing out from beneath the door. There was a pungent smell of smoke in the air, like burning leaves and freshly turned earth in a forest a thousand leagues from the desert.

  Someone was waiting for her, and they wanted her to know it. Which meant she was wasting her time sneaking up on him. Or her. Sümeya might have beaten her here. The Maiden might, in fact, be waiting on the other side of the door, ready to run Çeda through with her ebon sword. She’d do it with pleasure and spit on Çeda’s dying body as she left, glad to be rid of the gutter wren from Roseridge once and for all.

  Çeda steeled herself and opened the door and found a man sitting against the wall, smoking a pipe, studying her with a surprised glint in his eyes.

  “Who are you?” Çeda asked warily.

  “How quickly they forget.”

  She recognized the voice first, the man second. His features had been obscured by the deep shadows thrown by the lone candle in the center of the rug, but when he leaned forward he was easy to recognize. It was Ramahd, the Qaimiri nobleman who’d lost his wife and daughter to Macide.

  Çeda stepped into the room, closing the door behind her. “What are you doing here?”

  He stared at the bandages over her righ
t wrist, but then his eyes noted what she was wearing: the simple white dress given her by Zaïde. From the narrowed waist to the square-cut neck, anyone familiar with Sharakhai would know what it was. “The Maidens got quite a display tonight, didn’t they?”

  “The Maidens have no shortage of enemies,” she replied.

  His knowing smile widened. He puffed on his pipe, taking a full, deep breath. He released a large smoke ring with an expert puff, then a smaller one that ran straight through the larger before the two of them dissipated into the haze hanging below the ceiling. “No shortage of allies, either, it seems.”

  “I asked you why you’ve come here.” And she realized then why he’d been surprised when she’d entered. He hadn’t been waiting for her. He’d been waiting for Emre. She said nothing of it, though, not wanting to tip her hand, not until she knew more.

  “I’ll tell you if you answer a question of mine.”

  “I don’t bargain with men who steal into my home.”

  He pursed his lips and nodded. “So this is your home. I wasn’t sure. And Emre is . . . what? Your husband? Your brother?”

  “That’s what you wish to ask?” She scoffed. “A few questions of the locals would answer that.”

  He took in her dress anew and used the mouthpiece of his pipe to point at her, emphasizing his words. “Did you take part in the attack?”

  “I witnessed it.”

  He stood, a thing that seemed nonchalant but was all the more threatening for it. She took a half-step toward the table on the far side of the room, where the kitchen knife lay.

  “That’s not what I asked,” he said.

  “My business is my own.”

  He took in a deep breath and released it in a huff. “Do I have to spell this out for you?”

  She took another half-step. “Yes, you may very well have to.”

  “You know why I’ve come to Sharakhai. You know, or at least suspect, that Macide was behind the attack on the House of Maidens. Knowing these two things you’ll understand why I might wonder if you’re in league with him and why, if you were, I’d need to ask more pointed questions.”

  “I wasn’t part of it, Ramahd. Now take the rest of your questions to the gods, for I’ll not answer them. Not upon the point of a knife.”

  This time when she moved, he took a half-step of his own.

  She made a move for the knife, sending him in that direction, then pulled out the slim knife she’d hidden along her thigh. As he approached, she flicked it toward his arm, hoping to nick him and get him to back away, but his reflexes were viper quick. He grabbed her poisoned wrist, all but ignoring the strike from the palm of her left hand, though it connected with his chin.

  Pain ran through her, not just in her wrist and hand, but up her arm, through her shoulder, and into the hollow of her chest. It felt as if the poison were running rampant once more, eating her from within. The agony started strong and then built and built until her entire world went a brilliant and blinding white.

  Çeda stands in Saliah’s garden, Saliah herself nowhere to be seen. Above her the crystals are ringing. They’re aglow among the acacia branches, splinters fallen from a broken autumn moon.

  The sound of it . . . Dear gods, why has she never heard it before?

  There are voices among those melodic sounds. Perhaps the voices of the dead, whispering of the lives they once led. Or the echoes of the future, passed back through the doorways of time. Whatever the case, it’s suddenly clear that the chimes are not just connected to the garden, but to the Shangazi itself, from the great mountain ranges that surround it to the caravanserais that stitch the desert’s fabric. They are the strings by which Saliah touches the lives of every man, woman, and child who treads the amber sands. That was what she had done when Çeda struck the tree with Saliah’s staff, what she had done when Çeda came here as a child with her mother and climbed the tree: Saliah had listened, hearing the tale of what might yet be.

  As Çeda watches, a child steps into the garden. Me, Çeda says in awe. That girl is me.

  The young Çedamihn moves to the tall acacia. Walks slowly around it, glancing every so often toward the entrance to the garden, listening, Çeda knew, for her mother as she bargains with the desert witch. Young Çedamihn steps around the tree, staring up through its branches, much as grown Çeda had done mere moments ago. Then the child runs and leaps. She climbs through the tree’s branches with a smile wide as the bright blue sky.

  Çeda envies that child, who doesn’t yet know that her mother is going to die. It is still only a small fear hidden somewhere inside her, distant enough that she can pretend it won’t happen.

  Mere hours from now, Ahya will be found hanging from the gallows, foul words cut into her skin: Whore. False witness. And the strange symbol that has haunted Çeda ever since.

  The sounds from the chimes change. They become deeper, the voices within them clearer. Çeda tries to comprehend, but they are confusing—strands of a spiderweb she has no hope of untangling.

  Saliah, however, understands them well; of this Çeda is sure. The regal woman stands at the garden’s entrance, staring sightlessly toward young Çedamihn. But more importantly, she listens. She hears. She knows what the chimes are saying—it is, after all, why she allowed Çedamihn into the garden in the first place. She might have pretended to listen to Ahya’s words, pretended to listen to her pleas to take Çeda in, but she had been waiting all along for the chimes to tell her what to do.

  Does she need others to ring the chimes, Çeda wonders, or is it simply the first step to seeing one’s future? Saliah stands tall, eyes closed, listening to the chimes, listening to the voices, and then she turns her back on Ahya.

  Çeda sees it all play out, so similar to and yet so very different from what she remembers. As Saliah walks toward her home, Çeda sees the look on her mother’s face. How dearly she hoped that Saliah would take Çeda in. How dearly she hoped that someone would protect her daughter. Çeda hadn’t been able to see it at the time, but now she does: the instincts of a mother rising above the strict rules and harsh lessons she’d set for her daughter. What Çeda sees now is the very core of motherhood. Love, when all else is pain and confusion and worry.

  Çeda feels foolish for not having recognized it, for not having acknowledged it in some way, but she also wonders why her mother so rarely showed that side of herself. Perhaps because her mind was ever on her journey, her hidden war against the Kings. And surely in me she saw the face of my father, one of those very same Kings. No easy thing to reconcile for a mother obsessed with their downfall.

  Ahya recovers from her reverie and snatches Çedamihn’s hand, and off they go, into the skiff to sail over the desert sands, where their forms diminish until all Çeda sees is a swiftly moving ship on the horizon. Dark hull. White sail.

  And then they are gone.

  And Çeda is left feeling utterly, helplessly alone.

  ÇEDA BLINKED and found the man from Qaimir poised above her.

  By the gods, what was his name? Her mind was so muddled.

  Ramahd. His name was Ramahd.

  He was above her, straddling her waist and pinning her good hand down while leaving her wounded one free. He slapped her cheek, worry clear on his face. She got the impression he’d been doing so for a while. “Wake up!” he hissed.

  She stared at him as sweat trickled down her temples. Her skin was still alive with pain, but it was manageable now. The memories of Saliah’s garden were oh so vivid. The garden, the acacia tree, the chimes . . . dear gods, how beautiful the sound.

  Ramahd was staring at her as if she were mad. No. His face was a mask of worry, not caution. It was concern that filled his eyes. How strange that she would fail to recognize it as such when it was directed at her. She’d nearly forgotten him in the weeks since she’d last seen him. His strong jaw, arched brows, and rough-shaven skin gave him a rakish loo
k. And his scent was redolent of faraway places. As much as Sharakhai ran through Çeda’s veins, she couldn’t deny the lure of lands different from the sands of the Great Shangazi.

  “Feeling better?” he asked.

  She nodded, not quite able to speak.

  He lifted himself up and carefully released her left hand, glancing at it as if he expected her to strike him. He slid farther away on the floor and worked his jaw back and forth, then opened his mouth like a yawning hyena, all while continuing to eye her warily.

  “You were speaking to someone,” he said, “pleading with her.”

  “I was dreaming of a woman I saw in the desert.”

  “Ahyanesh?”

  A shiver ran along her frame.

  Part of her wished she hadn’t spoken her mother’s name aloud, but another part was glad to share it, so someone other than herself and Emre would know of Ahyanesh Allad’ava.

  “My mother’s name.” Çeda sat up and slid back until her back was against the shelves separating the open room from the simple kitchen. “Ahya to those who loved her.”

  He pulled one leg easily over the other until he was sitting cross-legged, the position Qaimiri used when praying. He stared at her, chewing on his words for a while before speaking again. “You were begging her not to leave.”

  She pictured Ahya hanging by the ankles from the end of a rope.

  Çeda swallowed the knot in her throat. To have seen her again so vividly, even in a dream, was a gift from the gods—truly it was. But it had brought her face-to-face with Ahya’s death once again, which was infinitely more difficult to cope with than she thought it would be. “My mother died when I was young.”

  “I see,” Ramahd said.

  “No, you don’t,” she replied, more harshly than she’d meant to.

  “No,” he said, “of course I don’t.”

  She wanted to apologize, but didn’t.

  Thankfully, he stepped into the uncomfortable silence. “What happened?” he asked, nodding toward her bandaged hand.