A Veil of Spears

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Things were escalating far too quickly, but when the woman made the foolish decision to reach for her lost sword, Çeda had no choice but to hold the man’s shamshir against her throat. Thankfully, she took it no further, choosing instead to stand and back away, hands raised.

  Without taking her eyes from them, Çeda crouched and picked up the fallen blade. “Who are you?”

  It was the woman who answered. “You’ve no right to come on our land, steal our water, and ask us questions.”

  After considering that for a moment, Çeda said, “You’re right.” She flipped both swords, one in either hand, so that she held them by the blade, then held them out. The woman accepted hers cautiously; the man leaned forward and snatched his angrily.

  Neither, thankfully, advanced on her.

  Çeda pulled the veil from her face and bowed her head to the woman. “My name is Verrain, and I’ve come from Sharakhai. I lost my skiff to slipsand two weeks ago and have been here ever since, hoping . . .” She waved in the direction of the skiffs beyond the rocks. “Well, hoping someone might come.”

  Kerim was in the cavern, his fear for Çeda spiking. By Rhia’s grace, remain silent, she bade him. Hide deep in the cavern unless the need is great. He was poised to howl, to come bursting forth from the tunnel’s entrance. If that were to happen, blood would flow, and it likely wouldn’t stop until many had fed the sands with their lives.

  The woman’s brows pinched in a frown, but then something caught her attention, and her eyes drifted down toward the cavern’s entrance. Çeda risked a glance back. Just entering the swath of shade were a dozen men and women, dressed in similarly pale thawbs and black turbans. A few, like the woman, wore turbans with coins woven into the fabric. Others wore conical helms with patterned scrollwork and a curtain of chainmail along the sides and back. They’d heard the clash of steel, no doubt. Now they’d spotted the wolves and were watching them warily. A few were drawing bows from their backs and stringing them. Three had broken away and were making their way toward the top of the rocks, but when the woman in the thread-of-gold turban held up her hand, they stopped and waited.

  Kerim, praise the gods, remained silent as the woman regarded Çeda levelly, thankfully with more curiosity than enmity.

  “And the wolves?” she asked.

  “They were here when I arrived. We’ve been sharing the water.”

  “Then you won’t mind if we kill a few?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t.”

  The woman considered for several heartbeats before she too removed her veil. Staring back at Çeda was a stern, weatherworn face with blue tattoos marking her cheeks, forehead, and nose. She sheathed her sword and motioned the man to do the same. She kept her right hand on the hilt of her shamshir, however, a warning that in the desert, trust was a commodity bought with truths.

  “How does a Blade Maiden find herself in the lands of Tribe Salmük?”

  “I’m no Maiden.” A simple enough statement, and true. “I stole both the dress and the blade.”

  “The Maidens are hardly in the business of misplacing their dresses, and even less of losing their blades.”

  “True, but nor do they complain much when their blood has fed the Great Mother.”

  The woman’s eyebrows rose as she glanced at the man beside her. “You expect me to believe you killed a Blade Maiden?”

  “I do.” Çeda watched carefully for their reactions, especially the woman’s. Çeda had two choices for how to proceed: either to mark herself as an enemy of the Kings or not. Depending on the loyalties of Tribe Salmük, or at least the band gathered around her, she might be choosing wrongly, but she suspected not—the way the woman had reacted to her claim of killing a Maiden had smacked of being impressed.

  “Perhaps by now,” Çeda went on, “word of a battle in Sharakhai has reached your tents. I took part in it. I fought the Maidens and the Kings.”

  The woman jutted her chin toward the horizon, where the yacht had disappeared. “That ship was searching for you, then?”

  Çeda nodded. “They’ve been chasing me for weeks.”

  The tattoos at the corners of the woman’s eyes pinched as she took in Çeda anew. “You’re a scarab?”

  A scarab of the Moonless Host, she meant, a soldier in the fight to bring down the Kings. “No,” Çeda replied, “but our interests align.”

  As the woman turned to the man, something changed below. Thorn emitted a low growl, and was moving toward the nearest of the desert folk, a man who held a bow with an arrow nocked and sighted. Çeda whistled sharply, urgently, and thankfully Thorn went silent and slinked away.

  The woman took this in, one eyebrow raised. “They were here when you arrived, you said?”

  Çeda shrugged. “We’ve come to an accord.”

  Now both her eyebrows rose, and she laughed. “I daresay!” She weighed up Çeda for a moment. “You’ll remain here.” And with that she headed down along the sloped stone, motioning the man to follow.

  When they reached the other desert folk, they spoke together for a time, softly enough that the strong wind hid their conversation despite the adichara petal Çeda had taken. The woman was doing most of the talking. Now and again some of them would look up toward her. The man at one point gesticulated wildly to the north—the place where Tribe Salmük was gathered, perhaps? When the conversation died, the woman waved Çeda to approach, and Çeda made her way down to the level stone beyond the cavern entrance, her heart pounding so strongly it was sending Kerim’s fear to new heights.

  Stay, Çeda said as calmly as she could manage. All is well.

  She heard his soft moan from the cavern’s entrance, but luckily no one else did, mixing as it did with the sigh of the wind.

  When Çeda came to a stop before the gathered tribesman, the woman clasped her hands before her and bowed her head, a gesture of peace in the desert, a gesture Çeda quickly mirrored. “My name is Beril,” she said, “and you are welcome in our lands. Our shaikh is only a day’s sail distant. I hope you’ll come to speak with him.” She looked Çeda up and down. “I suspect you could use the food, and we could use tales of the city.”

  “A trade, then?” Çeda asked.

  The woman named Beril tilted her head in acknowledgment, but not without a wry smile. “A trade.”

  Çeda couldn’t remain out here with a pack of wolves and live on lizards and beetles forever. Accepting Beril’s offer would mean that she would be parted from Kerim, at least temporarily, but it couldn’t be helped. She’d spent these weeks in the desert waiting for the dust to settle in the city, using that time to learn more about Mesut’s bracelet to free the souls within, but the time had come to move on. She had to return to Sharakhai, and soon. There was so much to do, not the least of which was learning more about the bonds that chained the asirim. In Kerim she had found one who could resist the call of the Kings. Might she find more? Might she be able to help them break their bonds once and for all? It must be so. They’d been weakening for centuries; she just had to find a way to exploit it.

  And there was the silver trove to consider, the thing she felt certain her mother had gone to find the night before she’d been captured and killed by the Kings. Dardzada, her foster father, had thought it a mirage. In the end, her mother had too, but Çeda would know the truth of it. She had to try to retrace her mother’s steps on Tauriyat that night.

  Lastly, there were the Blade Maidens. She needed allies. And what better way to gain them than by turning one of the Kings’ greatest strengths to her advantage? There was Zaïde, but the time had come to try to gain more, to convince others outside the thirteenth tribe that the Kings’ story—of the asirim being holy warriors who’d sacrificed themselves on the night of Beht Ihman—had always been a grand, sickening ruse.

  Still, this was no easy decision. Would Beril’s shaikh be friend or foe? In her time with the Blade Maidens she�
��d learned much of Shaikh Hişam, the leader of Tribe Salmük these past thirty years. He was petty and fought the neighboring tribes fiercely, wielding his control over access to the trading paths to Malasan like a cudgel. Still, he had no great love for the Kings of Sharakhai. He likely wouldn’t turn her in for ransom, not without hearing her tale and weighing what she might have to offer his tribe. He might even supply her with a skiff.

  “Very well,” Çeda said, “I will gather my things.”

  And so Çeda did. The desert folk went to the underground cavern and filled bladders with water. Kerim, blessedly, had retreated deep into the darkness. She could feel his long-quieted anger awakening once more, as if the presence of strangers had rekindled that most inescapable part of being an asir: hunger for the blood of mortal man.

  You’ve held it at bay for this long, she told him. It will keep a while longer. Stay where you are, Kerim, but be ready to follow once we’ve left.

  Soon Çeda was led to the skiffs hidden among the rocks. The wolves followed her for a time, Mist padding ahead of the others, yipping and jumping occasionally as if she wanted to play. Çeda knew that wasn’t it, though. Of course it wasn’t.

  Çeda scrubbed the fur behind the wolf’s ears, then knelt and hugged her, digging her fingers deep into Mist’s gray mane. “We’ll see one another again,” she said, kissing the wolf on the muzzle. Then she whispered, “Thank you for saving me.”

  They left soon after, sailing away across the sand, Mist watching long after the other wolves had peeled away. Soon she had shrunk into the distance, becoming lost altogether as clusters of rocks intervened. They sailed for the entire day, the crew strangely silent. They watched the horizon intently, wary of the royal yacht perhaps, or rival tribes.

  “I’ve heard tales of Hişam,” Çeda said as they ate flatbread laced with onion and leek. “They’ve all said he’s a good man, a just leader.”

  Everyone in the skiff stiffened, sending sly glances at one another; all but Beril, who held Çeda’s eye with a steady gaze. “Hişam is dead.”

  Çeda felt as if the sands were shifting beneath her feet. “My tears for your loss,” she said, making sure to meet every grim eye turned toward her. Hişam was childless, which might have put the succession of the tribe in question. Did that explain their tenseness? “Who leads your tribe now?”

  “You’ll see soon enough,” Beril replied.

  From that point on, the tone of the voyage shifted. Çeda no longer felt like a guest, nor even an interloper on their lands, but a prisoner. Her immediate thought was to run or to fight if necessary—with Kerim, who followed a good distance behind the skiffs, she stood a good chance. But if she were to survive out here in the desert, she needed to know more about the tribes. She would see this man, this shaikh, and see what he was about.

  Near nightfall, a cluster of ships seemed to lift along the horizon. They’d gathered by a large outcropping of stone that looked like a chipped axehead sticking out of the sand. As they came closer, groupings of tents were revealed. Three horses were tied to stakes near the largest ship. People moved about. A fire blazed at the center of the camp.

  As their skiff approached, Beril motioned to Çeda’s belt. “I’ll take your sword until you’ve spoken with our shaikh.”

  The others watched, ready. What could Çeda do? She’d known they would ask, and yet the idea of giving up River’s Daughter, the very symbol of a Blade Maiden, so repulsed her she considered challenging Beril to take it from her. But the shaikh had no reason to do her harm. If she were careful she should be able to gain his trust, a thing that would be impossible were she to resist. So she slipped the sword from her belt, scabbard and all, and handed it to Beril, who nodded sharply, relief clear on her hardened face.

  After they’d anchored near the larger ships, Beril entered one of the largest of the tents near the fire, taking Çeda’s sword with her. After a time, she stepped out, waved, and Çeda was led toward the tent, accompanied by four of the desert folk. None had hands on weapons, but they watched Çeda carefully from the corners of their eyes.

  Many took note of her arrival: men, women, and children, some preparing food, others working the ships. Most stared with mistrust in their eyes. Those who hadn’t noticed Çeda, or weren’t interested in the new arrival, seemed joyless, burdened, even in the menial tasks of mixing dough for flatbread, grooming horses, or tending to the ships.

  “When did your most gracious lord, Hişam, die?” Çeda asked. It was the only explanation she could think of for the strange mood.

  The man walking by her side did not reply, he merely led Çeda, along with the others, toward the large tent.

  All around them, the hands at work seemed to slow. All eyes turned to her. In the desert, she felt Kerim—a spike of fear burned suddenly inside his heart, mere moments before a hulking mass lumbered out of the tent. He was a beast of a man. A head and a half taller than Çeda. Arms like haunches of meat. Legs like tree trunks. He wore black armor that might once have been fine but was now nicked, rusted in places, torn near one shoulder so that it hung not-quite-right on his meaty frame. His black hair was matted to his forehead and cheeks, framing humorless, deep-set eyes that gave him the look of one of the terrible hyenas, the black laughers, that roamed the desert.

  She knew now why the tribe had acted the way it did, and why fear now filled Kerim’s heart.

  For Onur, the Feasting King, the King of Spears, stood before her, grinning as if he’d just found his next meal.

  Chapter 2

  FROM A DARK ALLEY in Sharakhai’s cramped west end, Emre studied a window across the street, three stories up, where an old man was methodically setting pistachio shells down into a slowly growing pile. His hands would disappear into the shadows of the room, then reappear in a flash of sunlight with fresh shells, the rhythm revealing how deft he was at shelling the nuts.

  Or how bloody hungry he is, Emre thought.

  Frail Lemi stood behind Emre, leaning his colossal frame against the mudbrick wall behind him. He cracked his knuckles loudly. “Time to go up, Emre?”

  “Not yet, Lemi. Quiet down.”

  “I know. You said. It’s just”—he looked up and down the street, a flash of fear showing on a stark face that all too often projected anger and threat and little else. “I hate being out like this,” he said. “Feel like a fucking lamb waiting for the slaughter. You know?”

  “I know, Lem. I want to make sure we’re not walking into a trap.”

  Frail Lemi hardly seemed to hear him. “I’m no lamb, Emre.”

  “I know, Lem.”

  Shifting his weight, Lemi cracked his neck and glared up and down the street. “No fucking lamb.”

  Emre kept watching the building—its windows, the roofline, the alleys. Not many walked this street in the Shallows, and those who did knew it didn’t pay to linger.

  It had only been four weeks since the battle at the harbor, a night the entire city now referred to as Beht Savaş, the Night of Endless Swords. Not much time in the grand scheme of things, but Emre was sure the hunt would continue for months, day by day putting more pressure on the resistance known as the Moonless Host.

  There wasn’t a night that passed where Emre didn’t hear of someone new found hung at the gates of Tauriyat, or face-down in the dry bed of the Haddah, or dragged away for an intimate chat with the Confessor King. He was sure one day he’d return to the hovel he shared with Frail Lemi to find a squad of Silver Spears waiting for them, or hear that Macide, leader of the Moonless Host, had been killed, having miraculously, and perhaps foolishly, remained in the city after his father, Ishaq, had returned to the desert.

  Two children ran along the street, each waving a dusty green streamer behind them. It made Emre feel foolish. Is this what it’s come to? Quaking at the sight of empty streets? Seeing ghosts in empty doorways?

  “Come on, Lem. Time to speak to the man.�
��

  Despite his bravado, Emre felt as if an arrow were being aimed between his shoulder blades as they crossed the street and entered the squat mudbrick building. It made his skin itch. As he passed into shade, and the breeze flowed along the shade-cooled hallway, he shrugged his shoulders in a vain attempt to ease the feeling. It made his skin itch even more—made him feel a bit of a coward to boot.

  He turned and groused at Lemi, “Stop stepping on my heels, will you?”

  Frail Lemi looked down, confused. He hadn’t stepped on Emre’s heels, but looked chagrined as though he had. “Sorry, Emre. I didn’t—”

  “Just give me some space. You’re breathing down my neck.”

  “Sorry, Emre.”

  Emre felt like a jackass, but said nothing as they took the stairs up to the third floor and walked past a dozen doorways. A month ago these doorways would have been open to allow the breeze to blow through, but today they were all covered by rugs or blankets—all but the last, which was their destination.

  “Galliu,” he said when he reached the open doorway.

  Across the room, in a chair beside the window, a wizened old man sat with a pile of pistachios in his lap. With practiced ease, he took one of the pistachios, split it using an empty shell, and popped the pale green nut into his mouth. “Emre,” Galliu said, chewing.

  As he spoke, he didn’t look toward Emre, nor did he look toward the growing pile on the windowsill as he set another pair of empty shells atop it. He was blind, or near enough that it made no difference.

  On a pallet in the corner rested a lone boy, twelve, maybe thirteen years old. The rest of the narrow pallets—fifteen in all—lay empty, bedrolls placed neatly at the head of each.

  “One?” Emre exclaimed, wondering what Macide was going to say.