Twelve Kings in Sharakhai

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  “The boy agreed, and in the morning four were dead. The two boys and their two sisters. The boy had loved those girls, and he had not truly hated the older boys. He grieved over his choice and prayed for Thaash to return, to explain why he’d taken more than he said he would, more than was necessary, but the god never visited the boy again.”

  Husamettín blocked a blinding succession of strokes and then slipped his sword inside Sümeya’s defenses again, cutting her other arm in the same place as the first. Then he stepped in and kicked Sümeya in the chest, launching her backward.

  Before Sümeya even came to a rest, he had sheathed his sword in one easy motion. He paced forward, hands behind his back, never taking his eyes from Sümeya, who was staring up at him not with hatred, but awe.

  “We never know the consequences of our actions,” he said. “Be careful you consider them before you call for blood again.” With deliberate care, the King turned to Çeda. “You have a tattoo on your back, do you not?”

  Çeda swallowed. Of course they would have seen it when they’d changed her out of her dirty, bloody clothes. Dardzada’s tattoo. The one that marked her as a bastard. She could feel her face redden as she replied, “I do, my King.”

  “Show it to Sümeya.”

  “My Lord King?”

  “Your tattoo. Show it to your sister Maiden.”

  Çeda stared at the King, then at Sümeya, who seemed utterly lost. It was a request she couldn’t deny. They’d find out soon enough anyway, so she turned away and pulled her dress off her shoulders, holding it down around her waist. Sümeya drew in breath.

  The King’s voice filled the courtyard. “Who marked you, Çedamihn?”

  “My mother,” she lied.

  “Do you know what it means?”

  Çeda nodded slowly. “It means bastard.”

  “No. Your mother would never have marked you so. Bastard is what it has come to mean, but it once meant, one of many and many in one. It means you are not alone, Çeda. Your mother knew this, and it is a lesson you have yet to learn, Sümeya Husamettín’ava.”

  Çeda pulled her dress back up, staring in wonder at Husamettín. Had Dardzada known? Of course he had. He was too learned a man, too careful. Why hadn’t he told her?

  And then the name Husamettín had spoken registered: Sümeya Husamettín’ava. By the gods’ sweet breath, Sümeya was Husamettín’s daughter. Husamettín’s refusal to do her harm suddenly made sense, but Sümeya had been trying to goad her own father into killing her.

  Husamettín turned and strode toward Çeda. He came to a stop before her, and his hand shot out, quick as a striking asp, to grip her about the throat. Her first instinct was to wriggle free, but his grip was like stone. Besides, this was clearly a test, so she let him have his way and met his gaze with as much resolve as she could muster.

  The King’s gray-blue eyes stared into hers, and for a moment, she felt as if he were peeling away her memories, stealing them from her like copper khets from a child. But she refused to let her fears show. She met his eyes, and for a moment it felt as if he were the boy his story had spoken of, the boy who had ordered the death of his tribal brothers. But then the moment was gone, and the King was as fearsome as he’d been moments ago.

  “She is a Maiden now,” Husamettín said loud enough for all to hear, then he shoved her away. Çeda staggered backward, catching herself against the nearby wall, as the King made his way calmly toward the prayer hall on the far side of the courtyard.

  Sümeya lay on the ground, wounds bleeding, eyes wide. Çeda thought she would be furious, but she looked more confused than anything else. On his way across the courtyard he came abreast of his daughter and stopped. He stared straight ahead, as if he were too disappointed to look at her, but he spoke in an unhurried and tolerant tone. “She is but a child, a girl who has not had the gifts of Tauriyat to lift her. And she is not Nayyan, nor does she pretend to be. Place not that heavy mantle upon her shoulders. Trust in Yusam’s judgment. Teach her”—the King resumed his measured pace toward the prayer hall—“for in the days ahead, we will have need of all we can find.”

  SÜMEYA WATCHED HUSAMETTÍN leave with shock fresh in her eyes. Only after he’d retreated into the prayer hall did she pick herself up off the ground, recover her sword, and clean it with the length of her sleeve. As she sheathed it at her side with all the deft efficiency of a seamstress threading a needle, her eyes stared sightlessly at the courtyard’s paving stones. “Melis, take her. Clean the refectory walls.” And with that she strode the other way, careless of her wounds, to lose herself in the shadows of the barracks.

  For long moments, no one in the courtyard moved. A few stared after the King of Swords, or Sümeya, their first warden, but many looked at Çeda. They weighed her, some with looks that wished they were standing on the gallows, reading her crimes to her before slipping the noose around her neck; others with cold assessment, as if they’d not yet made up their minds about her; still others with regret, as if they dearly wished Çeda had never turned up. Then, in ones and twos, they recovered and began to set about the business of cleaning up after the attack. A Maiden of thirty summers at the least, with hardly an ounce of fat on her, came and stood before Çeda. “Come,” she said, and walked toward the refectory on the far side of the courtyard.

  Çeda was exhausted, and what followed was a blur. She wanted nothing more than to sleep, but Melis took her to get brushes and buckets and soap and a degreasing solution she said would help remove the stains. She was not a beautiful woman, Melis. Her curly brown hair was tied in a knot behind her head. Freckles and blemishes marred her cheeks and forehead. But she was handsome, and she had an intensity about her, a look that said she would do anything she set her mind to.

  They went to the refectory, a long building that sat along the inner wall. It had been scorched in two places by the attack the night before. The ground near the walls was scorched as well, and there were still some fragments of clay and a viscous substance on the stones.

  “Start with the walls,” Melis said, pointing to one of the stains before scrubbing at one of her own.

  Çeda mirrored Melis’s movements, feeling awkward with this woman she didn’t know, performing a mundane chore after such an emotional night.

  “Sümeya is stern,” Melis said after a time, “and fiercely protective of the things she holds most dear. The Kings. Our House. Her honor. She is hardened steel, but she will warm to you if you show her your heart.”

  If I show her my heart she will kill me. “Was anyone burned?” Çeda asked, hoping to change the subject.

  “Three, though none badly. That was never their goal in any case.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It was a diversion. It’s why Sümeya is so angry.”

  “A diversion for what?”

  “This morning we discovered another attack had been waged mere moments after the attack here began.” Melis spit on the ground. “Thirty rebels broke into a manse near Blackfire Gate.” Blackfire Gate was one of the largest gates into the old city, and near it, inside the ancient walls of Sharakhai, lay one of the wealthiest sections of Goldenhill. The elder families lived there, children of the Kings, and others who had survived Beht Ihman. “Eight were killed, and a score or more wounded, but worse, they took Lord Vesdi, a first son.”

  “First son?”

  Melis rolled her eyes. “You really are a moon-eyed calf, aren’t you? It means he is first blood of the Kings themselves—a son, not a grandson or some more distant heir.”

  “Why would they take a lord?”

  “Do the Al’Afwa Khadar need a reason?”

  Çeda shrugged. “It’s an expensive endeavor, is it not? The time and money to wage such a campaign against the House of Kings. The cost in lives. Why do all that to steal away a single lord? There must be a purpose, but what? Ransom?”

  “I doubt it. T
he Al’Afwa Khadar have only rarely ransomed their prisoners in the past, and none since Ishaq retreated to the desert and ceded control of the rebels to his son, Macide.”

  “Why, then? Why steal into a manse and kidnap a lord?”

  “That is the question that plagues Sümeya. No doubt it plagues the Kings as well, though none of them would admit it.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to hear this news,” Çeda said, but she was really thinking of Emre. Had Ramahd been right? Had Emre arranged all of this? Even if he’d only played small part in it, he must have known what he was doing. The Emre she knew bore no love for the House of Kings, but neither did he harbor much resentment. He wouldn’t go out of his way to do them harm.

  So why?

  Why now?

  She had no answers and no idea how she was going to find Emre to ask him.

  “Don’t scrub so hard,” Melis said, pointing to Çeda’s patch of stone. “Give the bristles a chance to work.”

  Çeda did, and the soot began to fade with more ease. “It will never come out,” Çeda said. “Not fully.”

  “We don’t mind scars in this house, but neither do we leave our wounds untended.” Melis swiveled Çeda’s direction and examined the skin along Çeda’s hands and face and neck like a collegia scholar would a newfound tablet, then set back to work, hiking up her black dress so she could move more easily. “You have a fair few scars of your own. Who gave them to you?”

  “Mostly men I didn’t see eye to eye with.”

  Melis scrubbed viciously for a moment as a reluctant smile overcame her. And then she laughed. “Let all men quake who stand before Çedamihn of the Endless Scars.” She laughed again, and this time Çeda joined her.

  Melis talked more easily after that, opening up more than Çeda would have guessed. She told stories of her childhood in Tauriyat. She’d been born here. Her father was Kiral, the King of Kings.

  “Do you have brothers and sisters?” Çeda said.

  “I had two sisters, but both died when I was young. I have dozens of half-brothers and half-sisters, though. The Kings rarely stay with one woman—or man, for that matter—for long.”

  “Do they have so much trouble finding love?”

  Melis shook her head while shuffling to her right. “It’s love they’re guarding against. Wouldn’t you if you lived so long as they?”

  Çeda had thought about this before. Who in Sharakhai hadn’t? It would be a curse, the way they lived, to watch all those you loved die.

  Çeda asked Melis more about her father. Kiral did not rule over the other Kings, she learned, but most bowed to his wisdom, and his word carried much weight when there was something he wished to have done. To Çeda’s great surprise, Melis had spoken to him only three times in her life. Once when she had become a woman, once when she had become a Maiden, and once when she had struck the head from the leader of a desert band during a vicious fight in the eastern passes.

  “And how did you find him?” Çeda asked.

  Melis stopped scrubbing a tenacious patch of soot. “How do you mean?”

  “Was he kind?”

  Melis shrugged and resumed. “He barely acknowledged my presence. He has many daughters among the Maidens, more who have left this House, and more still who live elsewhere in the city and in the desert. In truth, though, I see them rarely. My sisters in the House of Maidens are my family now, as will soon be true for you, I suspect.”

  It felt so bizarre to hear the word sister as it applied to Çeda and the Maidens. She was sure she’d never become accustomed to it, but she had to try. “I doubt Sümeya will ever consider me a sister.”

  “You’ll forgive Sümeya in time. And she’ll come to respect you, if not love you. You may find her hard now, but in time you’ll thank her for it.”

  “And you? Why don’t you spit on me the way she does?”

  The smile on Melis’s broad face returned, and Çeda realized how wrong she’d been before. There was a raw beauty to Melis, and it blossomed when she smiled. “Would you rather I did?”

  “The gods care little for my prayers, Melis.”

  Melis stopped her scrubbing for a moment, and regarded Çeda with a mischievous smile. “The gods care for all our prayers. They merely care for their own more.” Then she shrugged and went back to work. “My mother’s father came from the Shallows, and his father came from the desert. We are all connected in the Shangazi, are we not?”

  “I suppose we are,” Çeda replied.

  “Sometimes Sümeya forgets that. Too often she looks at you and other innocents as the enemy. She forgets our history, how we ourselves broke from the desert tribes for mutual protection, how the gods favored the Kings of Sharakhai and the people they vowed to protect.” She stopped for a moment and stared into Çeda’s eyes. “She also forgets how far Yusam sees. When I was a girl, years before my naming day, Yusam told me I would come to him again.”

  “That’s hardly prophetic,” Çeda countered. “Were you not meant for the House of Maidens?”

  Melis shook her head. “I was the third daughter. My eldest sister, Hajesh, was meant to take up the blade. She died when I was seven. She slipped from a wagon and struck her head on a blunt stone near Bent Man Bridge. Phelia died less than a year later. She was swept away by the Haddah when a storm washed through the desert. And that left me. When I went to him on my thirteenth birthday, he told me more, and all of it has come true, all save one.”

  “And what is that?”

  “That one day I would stand beside a queen. That I would protect her above all things.”

  “A queen? Queen Alansal of Mirea?”

  Melis’s expression made it clear she didn’t understand it either. “Who can say? Yusam sees far, and if he says it will be, then it will. I don’t know when, or how, but it will happen one day. So I believe he has seen true to your heart, too. If he wishes you to be among the maidens, it is for good reason, and Sümeya would do well to recognize that.”

  “Sümeya has no say in the decision?”

  Melis smiled. “Do you wish her to?”

  “No. It’s only—”

  “I know what you mean, and if things had gone differently, if you’d been brought up near the Hill, perhaps Sümeya might have held some sway over which daughters were chosen. But now it is out of her hands. In some ways it is out of Yusam’s and the Kings’ as well.”

  “But Yusam already chose me. Husamettín approves of having me in his house.”

  “There is tonight to consider as well,” Melis allowed, “when you’ll be presented to the Kings. But none of these are the true test of the Maiden.”

  “Then what is?”

  “Assuming nothing amiss happens tonight, then you will be taken to the desert in two weeks, and the asirim will judge you for themselves. That is the true test, so enjoy tonight. Be proud. That is why you are being taken to the Sun Palace, after all.”

  Çeda had known about the aspirant’s vigil from her research in the scriptorium cellars, but it had seemed distant until now. The thought of being left alone among the asirim for a night struck fear into her heart.

  Melis chuckled at Çeda’s look and said, “Fear not, little wren. The holy ones will treat you well if your heart is true.”

  Çeda could only think of the asir that had kissed her, the warmth of its lips. She tried to get Melis to tell her more of what to expect that night, but no matter how slyly she thought she was asking the question, Melis refused to take the bait, so she changed tack. “How many Maidens are there?”

  Melis frowned as she scooted to her right, the muscles along her arms cording as she worked. “Have you not heard the song?”

  “What song?”

  “Twelve Tribes with Twelve Daughters?”

  “That’s a children’s rhyme.”

  “Written about the maidens a century and a half ago. Do they teach
children nothing outside the walls?” She meant outside the old city walls, where Roseridge lay, and the Shallows, the Well, and other poorer sections of the city. “That is our number, oh Çedamihn Leather-headed. One hundred and forty-four blades of black, one hundred and forty-four black-clothed maidens, and Husamettín, the King of Swords, to lead us all.”

  “But the barracks are huge. Surely there are beds for many more than that.”

  “There are,” Melis allowed. “Some are for the Matrons, and there are Maidens who remain for a time with us after they’ve laid down their blades due to age or infirmity. Instead of the usual five, our hands can number nine or ten for convenience, such as those hands assigned to watch over the caravanserais. At other times they will number only three or four. Some Maidens are assigned singly to the Kings and never enter a hand at all.” Çeda had heard rumors of such women, assassins and spies and other agents who answered directly to Zeheb, the King of Whispers. “And beyond that,” Melis went on, “our total can fluctuate. At times we have been as few as seventy and as many as three hundred. Some have only just entered our ranks and are not yet true and proper Maidens. Others may be wounded and unable to fight. Some may die, leaving ebon blades orphaned.”

  “And some may go missing.” Çeda left the thought to hang between them like a thread ready to unravel.

  Melis swung her head around and leveled a most uncharitable look at Çeda. “If there’s a question you wish to ask, then ask it.”

  Çeda liked Melis’s forthrightness, and saw no reason to dance around the point. “Zaïde spoke of Nayyan. Sümeya hates me for many reasons, but most of all because of her sister. If I am to take her place in the hand, I would know who she was.”

  At this Melis bristled. “You will never take her place.”

  “Nor do I mean to, but that’s how Sümeya sees it, as if I’m trying to take up her thawb and turban and sword.”