Prosul Akheba’s residents weren’t so choosy in their adoration, and they seemed to believe only gods and rulers required permanent walls. Jagandiz’s temple was a stone island in a sea of brilliantly colored tents. The tents in the city’s wealthier areas were expansive constructions as large as any highsider dwelling in Ninavel. Some were dyed in desert hues of rust-red and smoky orange and sun-yellow. Others were vivid greens, pinks and purples, and still more were an array of blues that outdid the cloudless sky above. The rainbow of colors faded with distance, the tents growing shabbier and smaller until the city ended in the snaking line of the outer ward wall. Poking up through the tents was a sprinkling of other stone buildings, each a temple honoring one or another of the myriad gods and goddesses favored by Varkevians. At the city’s center, the vermilion and ochre butte of the Khalat loomed over all.
I squinted at the Khalat through my spyglass. The butte was huge. Vertical cliffs a thousand feet high sat atop a crumbling skirt of red shale. A multitude of stone towers crowded the butte’s flat summit. They weren’t sleek and airy like Ninavel’s shining spires but squat, bulky things, as if disdaining the gauzy city below them. My spyglass revealed the towers weren’t quite as blandly ugly as they appeared from a distance. The stone of their sides was carved into ornate scenes out of legend.
“Have you sighted a way up the cliffs, or must I bribe our way onto yet another temple roof?” Zadikah was crouched in the shadow of a tattered prayer flag, watching me with simmering impatience.
“Getting up the cliffs is the easy part.” The butte’s sandstone was fractured by long vertical cracks, some of them wide enough to hide a climber’s entire body inside. To reduce the chance of being spotted on the ascent, we’d have to climb at night, but crack climbing could be done by touch and a little help from the moon. That said, the climb would be slow and strenuous as hell, especially since Zadikah hadn’t the skill to lead any pitches. She’d have to use ascender cords to haul herself up the rope behind me.
At least I’d had three whole days to recover while we traveled here. No way to tell if I’d regained all my stamina until I started climbing, but I felt a lot better than I had when we started the journey. Zadikah was no longer limping, though she still dutifully rubbed her injured thigh twice a day with some kind of stinking oil Teo had given her.
“It’s the wards that’ll be the real trick,” I said. “You’re sure they run the entire circumference of the butte’s summit?”
“The Zhan-davi aren’t fools,” Zadikah said. “The clifftops are fully warded, and so is the tunnel.”
Set right where the cliffs met the shale was a dark opening under a massive carved arch. The Khalat’s one regular entrance—according to Zadikah, a tunnel wide enough for three wagons to travel abreast climbed in a spiraling ascent through the butte’s rock to the citadel at the summit. Day and night, a clot of guards choked the archway. They challenged everyone that approached up the switchbacked road leading from the tent city, and I didn’t doubt the guards weren’t the only protection. The arch must contain wards as strong as the Zhan-davi could possibly pay for.
The cliffs, though…the Zhan-davi might be rich, but they weren’t staggeringly wealthy like Lord Sechaveh. Hard to believe they could afford the exorbitant expense of maintaining powerful wards over so broad an area.
I sighed and lowered the spyglass. Beyond Prosul Akheba’s sea of tents lay a sandy valley bounded by distant orange cliffs. Kiran and the rest were somewhere beyond those cliffs, hopefully safe. I hated not knowing for sure. Hated even more not having his help in this—I was betting he could’ve sensed something useful about those wards.
As it was, I had to rely on Zadikah. Whose scowl was growing stormier by the instant. On our way to the city, she’d been a better travel companion than I’d expected—efficient, competent, even given to flashes of sharp humor that gave me a glimpse of why Teo, Raishal, and Veddis liked her so well. But since we’d crossed within Prosul Akheba’s ward wall, she’d been getting all snappish again.
She wasn’t the only one whose nerves were winding tight. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ve an idea, but I need a few things first. One, a good long look at those maps of the Khalat that Kiran saw you hand off to your friends. Two, I’m not taking you even a bodylength up those cliffs until I get the herbs Teo needs to heal Kiran.”
“The maps I can arrange,” Zadikah said. “Once you convince me you know how to pass the wards, then we’ll discuss the herbs.”
Teo had said not to worry, that he could keep Kiran stable for weeks if need be. Yet my gut insisted that delay would lead to disaster. “How long will this arranging take?”
“Not long. Follow me.” Zadikah opened a grate in the rooftop, and we descended the narrow stair she’d bribed a skinny young priestess to let us access. Soon enough, we were striding sandy aisles between rows of tents under the glare of the midmorning sun.
Same as in Ninavel, the denizens of Prosul Akheba had better sense than to do business during the worst heat of the day. The morning markets were closing up. Traders packed away everything from live lizards to ornate god-figurines. They thumped sand off bare rugs and rickety shelves, while chattering crowds laden with the day’s purchases moved slowly toward their homes. The mood felt as cheerfully boisterous as streetside in Ninavel, which surprised me. I’d expected to see more skittishness in a city about to endure a revolt.
But Prosul Akheba wasn’t Ninavel, in a thousand little ways that set homesickness gnawing at my gut. The market had no charmsellers or illusionists, and while cook-carts offered plenty of curries and spiced meats and cinnamon nuts, I hadn’t seen a single honeycake or bottle of firewine. And everybody looked so damn Varkevian. I spotted occasional brown and black faces among the sea of coppery skin and dark curls, but not many. The few tents I saw with foreign house crests embroidered on their entry flaps all had a crudely warded stave planted in the sand beside them with a stamped copper disc dangling from the top.
“What’re those?” I asked Zadikah.
“Proof they’ve bought the Zhan-davi’s permission to raise a tent here,” she said. “Resident sivayyah must also wear personal tokens at all times, though foreign-born and city-born alike, everyone needs one. Without either a residence or a trader’s token, you can’t buy so much as a drop of water.”
“Which do you have?” She’d bought enough water to refill all our skins from a guarded cistern at the ward wall.
“Trader’s token. The Zhan-davi would never give a houseless mixed-blood madakkis like me a residence token. When I’m here, I share the tents of friends.”
No mistaking the bitterness in her tone. “The Zhan-davi control all the water, then?” Just as Sechaveh did in Ninavel, though Sechaveh’s control was thanks to the city’s mages, and he didn’t give a damn who bought the water they conjured. All you needed in Ninavel was the right amount of coin. “But I thought the source here was natural?”
Zadikah nodded. “Word is an underground stream runs deep in a network of caves beneath the Khalat. Nobody but the Zhan-davi have ever seen it; they guard it well.”
Must be one hell of a stream if it could supply enough water for all the city’s needs. Enough, even, for ordinary families to have livestock—something nearly unheard of streetside in Ninavel. Scraping together enough coin to pay for your own water rations was hard enough, let alone water for animals. Ninavel’s stockyards were all owned by highside merchant houses wealthy enough to afford the animals’ upkeep. Yet walking past Prosul Akheba’s sunbaked tents, I heard not only a babble of voices speaking Varkevian, but goats bleating, hens clucking, mules braying, even the occasional whinny of a horse. A rank smell of animals and dung lingered under more familiar city scents of cooked meat and incense.
The tents we passed became more modest in size, their colors more drab. Zadikah started getting hailed by everyone from plump young mothers to wizened oldsters, and none of them wanted just a simple greeting but a full-on chat. If Zadikah suffered th
e same burning impatience I did, she hid it better than she had on the temple roof. She nodded and smiled and answered her friends’ questions in a swift babble of Varkevian I hadn’t a hope of understanding. Whatever she said about me brought clucks of sympathy and pitying looks; I did my best to look downtrodden and not like my blood was about to boil with frustration.
Finally Zadikah stopped in front of another temple, this one only two stories high. Threadbare prayer flags drooped on a single line strung from its roofpole, and three teenagers in shabby robes lazed on the step.
Zadikah held a quick conversation with the trio that ended with her flicking coins into their laps. One shorn-headed girl hurried off down the street, and a boy—slouching along with far less energy—led us into a room lit by dusty shafts of sunlight slanting in through round holes cut in the stone. On the packed sand floor, a man and woman danced to the slow thump of a tabis drum while a thin child sang a high, wordless song. A scattering of people sat around the dancers. Some were chewing hadaf or drinking spirits, some talking in low tones. A few glanced at us as we passed, their eyes hard and watchful in a way that had my hand hovering near my belt knife. Zadikah only nodded coolly to them and kept following our guide.
The youth shuffled past a chipped, cracked statue of a god I didn’t recognize, and waved us into an alcove with a narrow stairway. I climbed the stair after Zadikah and found myself in a chamber containing a stack of grimy cushions, a few books that looked like an animal had gnawed on them, and some bits of chalk and slate.
“Is this where you keep the maps?” If this dingy temple was the staging ground for her revolution, I was more than a little skeptical about the chances of success.
“No,” Zadikah said. “This is where we wait for those who hold the maps.”
I squinted at the wall by the chamber’s single window. Faded flecks of colored paint showed the stone had once been decorated with some kind of mural, but somebody had scraped most of the picture off in long, vicious cuts.
“Did somebody paint something rude?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Zadikah said. “It was a painting of demons rebelling against Shaikar to escape their servitude. A tale the Zhan-davi consider a southern heresy.”
She was watching me closely. I’d maybe been a little too eager on our way here in asking her to share tales of red-horned hunters and the veiled temple, though I’d backed off quick when she responded with dangerously pointed questions about my interest.
I kept my tone bored. “Whereas your little gang of revolutionaries considers the tale an inspiration to follow.” Zadikah herself maintained she cared nothing for superstition, insisting the veiled temple was a myth and demons probably the same. All I’d gotten out of her about the red-horned hunters was that they were supposed to be Shaikar’s most vicious weapon of vengeance, beasts so terrible the very sight of them destroyed mortal minds. I was all for sending mind-destroying beasts after Ruslan, but nothing Zadikah had said included any hint of how to do that. If I got the herbs and cured Kiran, maybe he could find something more in the collegium. Like a treatise on “Methods to Send Shaikar’s Hunt Slavering after Your Enemies.” Preferably with diagrams and detailed instructions.
Zadikah ran a finger over a faded streak of paint. “My father used to teach here.”
I blinked, startled out of wistful daydreams. In three days of traveling together, Zadikah hadn’t once volunteered anything personal. Nor had she been willing to discuss her kin beyond calling Gavila a lot of uncomplimentary names.
“I thought Veddis said your father was a scholar at the collegium.”
“He was.” Zadikah paced to the chamber window, which was a simple slit cut in the stone. Dusty sunlight shone in a halo around her knotted hair. “The collegium used to send junior scholars to all the temples of the city to teach Prosul Akheba’s children, foreign-born and city-born alike. Reading, writing, and simple figuring, all of it free for any children who cared to learn, and those who showed aptitude for scholarship could apply to the collegium for further training.”
I could guess where this was going. “The Zhan-davi decided they didn’t like that tradition.”
Zadikah said, “They shut down the temple schools and opened their own, which teach only the children they consider pure of blood—or those who can pay a ridiculously high fee. They whipped any collegium scholars who tried to keep teaching at the temples, some to the death.”
“This happened to your father?”
The line of Zadikah’s shoulders tightened. “No. He stopped teaching and left the city without protest.”
Ah. And she’d been angry at him for it. “So you’re the one protesting instead. By helping some southern house shake loose the Zhan-davi, all so the newcomers can add the city’s profit to their vaults. What makes you think they’ll be any kinder once they gain power?”
Zadikah turned from the window. “Is that what you tell yourself, working for the lord of Ninavel? ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter if Sechaveh cares nothing for the suffering of those he rules, because anyone else would be no different. So I’ll just keep right on aiding him in his cruelties.’”
I winced, thinking of how in killing Vidai we’d ensured that Sechaveh would remain in power, that Ruslan and all the mages like him would live.
“Sometimes the cost of change is too high.” We did the right thing. Vidai would have condemned countless innocents to death by riot and thirst.
“You mean you’re too afraid to try,” Zadikah said, contemptuous. “Well, I am no coward. I say it’s better to take a chance on the possibility of kindness than endure the certainty of cruelty.”
“It’s not cowardice! Not when—” A stealthy footstep sounded behind me. I whirled.
A dark figure leaped straight at me. I threw myself sideways, but a crushing blow slammed me to my knees. Before I could rise, a length of thin, viciously sharp wire looped tight around my throat.
“Don’t move. One tug, and your lifeblood pours onto the floor.”
I recognized that accented growl. “Bayyan? What the fuck—”
“Quiet.” The wire cut a line of burning pain across my throat. I shut up.
Zadikah faced Bayyan in a tense, ready crouch, her knife drawn. “If you won’t answer him, then answer me. What are you doing, Bayyan?”
“He acts on my orders.” A Varkevian woman as ancient as the desert and so short that she barely came up to Zadikah’s shoulder stalked into the room. She surveyed me with shrewd eyes. “When first meeting a stranger, I prefer to be cautious. Especially when that stranger is a shadow man.”
This must be the mastermind behind Zadikah’s venture. The pride and authority in the old woman’s bearing certainly matched Kiran’s description of the oldster he’d seen in the slot. The arsenal of charms he’d mentioned was probably concealed under her shabby robe, which was so loose and layered it could hide damn near anything.
Zadikah sheathed her knife and bowed, deep and formal. “Ama Yashad. All I said in my message is true. Dev has promised to aid me in return for help for his sick friend. You need not worry about his loyalty to us. The snake-eaters hold his friend, and I hold the name of an enemy he’s desperate to avoid.”
I’d known all along that Bayyan’s protection was a double-edged blade. I’d put my faith in Zadikah as much as she had put hers in me, but now I prayed I hadn’t made a deadly mistake.
“I’m glad to see you haven’t lost all caution,” Yashad said to Zadikah. “But if there’s one thing I know of shadow men, it’s never to trust in their friendship…or their word.” She slipped from her robe a charm that looked like a fat silver spider set with a single dark ruby.
Oh, hell. The metal spider was a truth-tell. Not a charm often used in Ninavel, as truth-tells were too expensive for ordinary streetsiders and too limited in usefulness for highsiders, who could afford to pay a mage to hold a proper interrogation. A truth-tell couldn’t force truth out of a man, only confirm it, and that for only a few quick answers before the ch
arm’s magic burned out. But given all Kiran and I had concealed from Zadikah, the prospect of even a brief interrogation left me cold with nerves.
Despite the wire still tight around my neck, I spoke with all the belligerent confidence I could muster. “You want assurance I won’t betray you? Happy to give it. Though you could’ve asked nicely.”
Yashad gave a wheezing chuckle. “So you could’ve had the chance to run, shadow man? I think not.” She yanked open my shirt laces and slapped the charm onto my chest. “Kavadi.” The charm warmed. New pain needled me as the spider’s silver legs sank into my flesh. The ruby took on a rich red glow.
Yashad said to me, “If we discover you’ve lied in any way, Bayyan severs your throat.” She looked to Zadikah. “You said you hold the name of his enemy. Find out if he told you true.”
Zadikah’s dark face was coldly impassive, but I knew her well enough now to see the tension underlying her control. She was worried I’d fail this test.
“Is Ruslan the name of the enemy who hunts you?” she asked.
I’d been so dismayed over Kiran spilling the truth; now I was glad he’d saved me from an immediate garroting. But gods, was it my imagination or had Yashad stiffened upon hearing Ruslan’s name? I’d counted on Zadikah’s ignorance—hell, even most living in Ninavel didn’t know blood mages’ names, as Ruslan and his ilk hardly spent much time streetside—but a spymistress for one of the great houses might well have studied up on Sechaveh’s most dangerous ally.
All my attention on Yashad, I said, “Yes.”
Her wrinkled face gave nothing away. Maybe I hadn’t seen what I thought. Yet the worry souring my stomach refused to ebb.
“Do you intend to betray us or break faith with us in any way?” Zadikah asked.
“Not unless you fuck me over,” I said.
Yashad put a bony hand on Zadikah’s wrist to forestall her next question. She asked me, “Are you truly in the employ of Sechaveh of Ninavel?”
Fuck. I took a ragged breath and sent a desperate prayer to Khalmet. The charm’s warmth was already fading. Maybe as the magic died it wouldn’t be that sensitive to shades of truth. Sechaveh had taken me into his service and never released me. More, he couldn’t possibly want Alathia destroyed. Metal-poor Alathia was Ninavel’s largest trading partner, and all Sechaveh cared about was profit. Stopping Ruslan was firmly in Sechaveh’s best interest.
The Labyrinth of Flame (The Shattered Sigil Book 3) Page 15
