Twelve Kings in Sharakhai

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Emre considered her with a calculating look on his face. “And Hamzakiir is Külasan’s son.”

  Çeda walked over to a nearby window and pulled the curtain aside to stare up at the House of Kings, wondering where Külasan was right then. “We couldn’t ask for a better chance. If we went at the same time, we could divide Külasan’s attention.”

  “But how will you get away from the Maidens?”

  “It’s a vigil, Emre, and aspirants are granted the right to choose the location of their vigil, so I’ll be near.”

  “How will you get into Külasan’s palace?”

  “I’ll find a way.”

  Emre shook his head. “This is madness.”

  “Yes, it’s all bloody mad, but here we are.”

  He paced, lost in his own thoughts. “Macide wasn’t planning on going for another week, but I’ll make him go early.”

  And here, she thought, was a flaw in their plan. “He’s a careful man, Emre. I don’t know that he will.”

  “He’ll do it if he thinks there’s a chance you can kill Külasan.”

  “Emre, Macide doesn’t even know me.”

  “I’ll make him,” Emre said. She tried to speak again, but he raised his hand. “I’ll make him, Çeda.”

  Çeda nodded. “I’ll find a way into the palace as soon as I’m able.” Further planning would have to wait for their arrival, for neither of them knew the layout of Külasan’s desert palace.

  The two of them stared at one another for a time. Çeda felt as though she were losing him already.

  Emre glanced toward the window.

  It was getting darker.

  “I should go,” he said. “Hamid will want to know what’s become of me.”

  “I need to leave as well,” Çeda lied. She was allowed the night here, but she refused to spend any more time in this place.

  First, though, Ramahd was owed a reckoning for what he’d done to Emre.

  RAMAHD SAT IN THE STUDY across from the sitting room where Çeda and Emre were speaking. They’d been in there a long while. Which was natural, he supposed. The two of them had much to discuss. When he heard the doors open at last, he moved to the study door and found Çeda stepping into the foyer, followed by Emre.

  Emre looked to Ramahd. “I’m leaving.”

  “Very well. I’ll have the wagon take you anywhere you wish.”

  Emre gave him a flat stare. “I’ll drive a spear through my own foot before I take another ride in one of your wagons.”

  “As you like, though you may have trouble at the gates.”

  Emre’s gaze shot between Çeda and Ramahd, an uncertain look in his eyes. He knew every bit as well as Ramahd how particular the Silver Spears could be at the gates of Tauriyat, even for those leaving. Emre exhaled noisily. “Fetch it then, you bloody Qaimiri bastard.”

  “It’s waiting outside. Dana’il will take you wherever you wish.”

  “Not without Çeda.”

  “No. I would speak with her.”

  Emre looked to Çeda, who immediately squeezed his hand. “All is well,” she said. Emre nodded and left, but not before shooting Ramahd one last look, as if he were measuring Ramahd’s coffin.

  When the wagon outside clattered away, Çeda turned on Ramahd, her face a study in rage. She strode purposefully toward him, her hand swinging out to slap him.

  He grabbed her wrist before she could connect. “I never meant for him to be hurt. I told my men not to harm him.”

  “You beat him.”

  “I was merely fulfilling my promise to you.”

  “Your promise?”

  “I said I would allow you to speak with him first. How did you suppose that was going to happen without my involvement? I needed to know where the Host is going. I still need to know.”

  “Well, you’ll not have that now.”

  “You gave me your word.”

  When she struggled to pull her hand away, he kept his grip strong. She went through a change, then. Her gaze softened but was also very intense, as if she’d come to a decision. “I said I would tell you if Emre was in the Host or not.”

  “And is he?”

  “Yes. But he didn’t kill your wife. So you’ll leave him be, or I’ll hunt you, Ramahd Amansir. I’ll hunt you down the way you hunt Macide. Now let go of my wrist.”

  She didn’t struggle as she said this; she didn’t try to make him loose his grip, but he kept it firm just the same. “You promised to tell me the rest as well. Where is he going? Where are you going?”

  In a blink her arm was high and she twisted—body and hip and shoulder and arm—torquing his wrist as she went. He was forced to release her, but she grabbed and continued to twist his arm, angling him forward and down with a sharp, precise motion that sent him falling. He rolled with it lest his wrist break. She could have held on to him, pulled his arm from the socket, but she let him go.

  He rolled to his feet, but Çeda was right there stabbing her finger at him like a scolding mother. “A real man would have taken the slap and been pleased with the bargain. I don’t owe you anything else. Not anymore. You lost that privilege when your men decided to put their hands on Emre.” She turned and strode toward the door like the goddess of anger incarnate.

  “Çeda, please!” He ran after her, but the moment he came close, she spun, slapped his hand away, and struck him across the jaw.

  He lost where he was for a moment. He tried to call her name, but she was already stepping in. She lowered her body, powering her right palm into his chest and sending him flying to the floor. Before his slide along the white tiles had stopped, she was on top of him, a swift punch landing on his right cheek.

  “That’s for Emre.”

  Then another above his left eye.

  “And that’s for me.”

  Then she stood, shaking out the fingers of her right hand while striding toward the door.

  “Leave us alone, Ramahd. I meant what I said.”

  And then she was gone, the door thundering shut behind her.

  As her footsteps faded, he made it slowly to his feet, grimacing from the pain in his shoulder where it had crashed against the tiled floor, wincing from the cuts inside his cheeks and lips as well as the bruises along his face and the back of his head. He stared at the door, realizing what an utter mess he’d made of things.

  “Well, brother?” came a voice from behind him and somewhere above. He turned and found Meryam standing at the top of the stairs. “Did she give you all you’d hoped for?”

  “Humor isn’t your strong suit, Meryam.”

  “You don’t think so?” Meryam began taking the stairs down, laughing as she came. “I think I’m rather gifted at it for a noblewoman.” She caught his look and frowned. “Tut, tut, Ramahd. She was never an ally of ours, and she never will be.”

  She might’ve been had I handled this differently. But you’re right. She never will be now.

  When Meryam reached the base of the stairs, she didn’t stop to speak with Ramahd or see if he was well. She headed straight for the sitting room where Çeda and Emre had been. When she reached for the door latch, the sleeve of her dress pulled back to reveal a blood-stained bandage wrapped around her left wrist. Ramahd followed, wondering whether Meryam’s plan had worked. Once inside the room, she moved to the wine cart, where she lifted the wine decanter and sniffed at the mouth.

  In the span of time it took her to draw in one deep breath, her eyes went distant, as they did when she slipped into her place of dark magic. She remained that way for a long while, her expression unchanging, her mind’s eye seeing something unknowable for someone like him, a man who had never touched blood in an arcane manner.

  “Enough, Meryam. Tell me. Did it work?”

  A smile stole over her then, like the cheetah from the children’s tales that had finally caught the v
ulture after years of disappointment. “Yes, it worked.”

  Blood. Her own blood. She’d added it to the wine, and from what little was left in the decanter, and the dregs sitting at the bottom of two glasses, he knew Çeda and Emre had both drunk some of it.

  “What now?” he asked.

  “Now?” Meryam strode toward him, her eyes no less fierce than the ehrekh’s had been in the desert—a thing that had been happening more and more of late. “Now, dear brother, you and I will have Macide.”

  Ramahd nodded, the long-burning flame within him rekindling. He was not pleased by his encounter with Çeda, but this was something. To have Macide within his grasp—after waiting so long, after being denied by his own King, his wife’s own father!—was pleasing in a way he couldn’t describe.

  Yes, this was something, indeed.

  FOUR YEARS EARLIER . . .

  TWO DAYS AFTER SEEING THE KING in the streets of the Knot, Çeda learned his identity. He was Mesut, the Jackal King, Lord of the Asirim. What the Lord of the Asirim did, or why he was called the Jackal King, no one seemed to know. Or rather, those who had any opinion at all presented differing accounts. He’d been the King to grant immortality to the asirim on the night of Beht Ihman long ago. He went to the blooming fields on Beht Zha’ir and called on them, sending them to Sukru, the Reaping King, to begin the tithe for the glory of Sharakhai and the gods. He chose a precious few from those taken by the asirim and created more of the holy defenders. One old woman in the bazaar even said he changed to a jackal on the night of Beht Zha’ir, and if he locked eyes with you, you would be turned to stone by his gaze.

  They were wondrous tales, to be sure, but Çeda had no way of telling which of them, or more to the point, which parts of them, were true. The best stories thrived when they contained a kernel of truth. One just needed to know how to prune the falsities and deceits to find the truth lying at their shared center.

  But how could she weigh stories hundreds of years old? That was the key, she knew, for the more she learned of Beht Ihman, the more she realized that exhuming the real story of what had happened that night would be the key not only to avenging her mother’s death, but finishing what her mother had started.

  She didn’t tell Emre she’d seen the Jackal King in the Knot. He’d only worry, and there was little enough to tell in any case. And yet, despite her silence, he said to her one day, “You’re acting strangely.”

  Which was rich, coming from Emre.

  They were hauling on a rope together, lifting a stone that Galadan, the old stone mason, was guiding into position. Emre worked for him, and they were helping to build a stone wall around a new garden in Tulathan’s temple grounds, just east of the Trough. Çeda had joined him because Djaga was in the final days of training before a new bout and said she needed to work with her regular sparring partners.

  “Emre, what do you mean, I’m acting strangely?”

  “You’re skittish. You keep watching the road like Bakhi himself is coming to collect you.”

  “I am not.”

  “You are!”

  “Higher!” Galadan called, tugging at the stone, which hung from the stout wooden crane.

  They hauled on the rope again, lifting the cubit stone high enough for Galadan to swing the crane over it, and then they lowered it down. With practiced ease, and no small amount of wiry brawn, Galadan tilted the stone up, unhooked and unwrapped the rope, and then dropped it back down so Emre and Çeda could prepare another from the dozens that lay along the base of the wall.

  As Emre lifted the next stone, she could see how his frame was filling out. Not all of the jobs he’d taken on were physical, but many were, and he had the muscle to show for it. He tilted the stone up, and Çeda slipped the rope under once, twice, then hooked it together on top. Then the two of them waited as Galadan tapped the first stone into position with a massive wooden mallet.

  “Good day to you, Emre.”

  Çeda turned and saw a lithe young woman who’d managed to catch Emre’s eye—not a difficult thing these days—carrying a clay ewer toward the well near the garden. Emre turned as well. His face positively lit when he saw her. “And you, Enasia.” He waved to her, and then turned back to Çeda, his cheeks reddening.

  “‘And you, Enasia.’” Çeda gripped her stomach and pretended to retch up her breakfast. “I feel sick.”

  “She’s nice.”

  “Nice . . . She’s a dainty little girl, Emre.”

  “She’s three years older than we are.”

  “And all the more frail for it. Just look at her.” Enasia was struggling with the well’s wooden crank handle. “She can hardly lift a bucket.”

  “Just because you look like a man . . .”

  Çeda stared at Emre, feeling as though she’d been dropped into a pool of ice water. Did she look like a man to Emre? To other men?

  Emre’s joking smile vanished as he stared back at her. Perhaps he was embarrassed by what he’d said, or perhaps just embarrassed the truth had slipped out; either way, he made no apology and went back to work, infinitely more focused on the mundane lifting of stones than he’d been minutes before.

  Soon Enasia walked back toward the temple. She looked toward the half-built wall, but Emre pointedly did not look at her, which made Çeda feel acutely uncomfortable. Far be it for her to stand between Emre and someone he wanted to know. But, why her?

  When they’d finished laying several more stones, Galadan called for a short break and went to check on the work of his son’s crew. Çeda wiped her brow and sat on a stack of the ivory-colored stones, her breath coming fast. “It’s just that it’s so near,” she said when Galadan was out of earshot, hoping to guide the conversation away from embarrassing things.

  When Emre looked up at her, she jutted her chin across the lush green garden toward Tauriyat, which loomed over them. Emre knew what she meant. The Kings. The Maidens. Çeda’s mother, Ahya. “Seems to me you were acting strangely before we got here,” he said.

  “You told me about this job three days ago, Emre. You don’t think I know where Tulathan’s temple sits?”

  He stepped closer and peered at her, as if he were hoping to use his gaze alone to bore a hole in her skull and steal her secrets, but just then Galadan returned and waved to the crane. “Stop it, you love birds, and start hoisting.”

  Emre’s face flushed again, even more deeply than before. She could feel hers doing the same as the two of them returned to the rope. For the rest of the day, she tried not to notice how the muscles along his shoulders and arms gleamed under the sun and bunched as he pulled at the rope. A few times, from the corner of her eye, she caught Emre watching her as well, but he would quickly look away.

  She made no mention of it, and neither did he.

  Over the next few days, Çeda couldn’t get out of her mind the image of King Mesut stepping out from that ramshackle home in the Knot. By Goezhen’s wicked grin, why would he have been there? She needed to know more.

  So that night, one night before Beht Zha’ir would come to Sharakhai once more, she snuck from their home in a dirty, threadbare thawb with a niqab to cover her face, and walked south along the streets of Roseridge. Only a few were about, as most in the city had sat down for their evening meal.

  As she neared the edge of the Knot, a tanbur was playing somewhere to the north, a doudouk somewhere east. They were nowhere near one another, but they were playing the same song, a mournful threnody to souls lost in the desert. It was not uncommon in Sharakhai for a musician to begin a song and for others to join in. There were nights when whole sections of the city came alive with it. But tonight, it was only these two, others perhaps as moved as Çeda was now, unwilling to join in and ruin the perfect sorrow being woven like threads in a grand tapestry. The song was just coming to a close when Çeda reached the street where she’d seen the Maidens and the King. A long pause followed, one fi
lled with whistles of appreciation from all around, and then a drum picked up a lively beat, and the tanbur and doudouk joined in, followed quickly by a melodic qanun and a Kundhunese rattle. It lifted Çeda’s spirits, especially as darkness came on, for she’d been thinking too much about her mother these past few days.

  Those thoughts all vanished, however, when she realized someone was standing near the door, the very door the King had stepped through before he passed by Çeda as she cowered in the dirt.

  She stopped in her tracks. The sound of her boots grinding against the street was loud in her ears, and yet the man didn’t turn around. He was tall and thin, and wore a green turban in an ancient style. Only those of noble blood, or those who wished to pretend to noble blood, wore their turbans tall with the crown overflowing. His dark clothes, and the shadows in the lane, nearly hid the coiled whip at his side. He stood with a kenshar in one hand, the tip of the blade against the palm of his right hand. He pressed the point deeply into his palm, drawing blood. As the wound bled, he put the knife in his mouth, sucked the blood from it, and slipped it home into the sheath at his wide cloth belt.

  He moved his hand in a circular motion, allowing the dripping blood to cover much of his palm, and then he squeezed his hand into a fist. With care, he opened his hand, inspected it, and then pressed it against the face of the wooden door. When he pulled his hand away, a bloody handprint remained, glistening in the fading light of dusk. But as he leaned forward and blew upon it, it faded entirely, as if it were little more than water drying on a sunbaked slab of limestone.

  The whip, she realized, was the sign of Sukru, the Reaping King, the one who wandered the city, choosing those who would be taken by the asirim. Surely he had just marked someone who lived behind that door.

  He turned to her and looked straight at her as if he’d known all along she was standing there and had allowed it. As the lively song continued to play, he strode her way, every bit as calm as the other King had been. And why not? This was his city. He had little to fear from a lone girl in the streets of Sharakhai. He stopped and looked into her eyes, which was all that her niqab revealed, but then he pulled her veil away and stared at her face. He inspected her as if he were reading some ancient scroll, learning her every secret.