A Veil of Spears

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Davud felt sick. He hadn’t wanted the curse of magic when Hamzakiir told him of it, and he didn’t want it now. He’d give it up in the beat of a butterfly’s wings if he could. But he couldn’t. It was foolish to pretend otherwise.

  Turning the pages, he found an overlaid sigil, penned in three different inks. It combined the two earlier sigils with a third: the one for binding or mastery that appeared earlier in the book. What the King meant him to do with it he wasn’t certain.

  He turned back toward Anila, and shivered. She was no longer staring at the ceiling. She still lay on the bed, but her neck was bent awkwardly as she stared at the book in Davud’s hands. She said nothing, her face held no expression whatsoever, and yet he felt a rush of shame.

  Anila either didn’t notice or didn’t care as her gaze slid from the book to the doorway. She watched it for a time, her eyes calculating, hungry, as they’d been when she’d questioned him, day after day, about his magic out in the desert.

  “Anila?”

  She didn’t respond, didn’t so much as look at him.

  “Anila, please speak to me.”

  Her only reply was to give the book one last glance, then return her gaze to the ceiling, wincing from the movement. Her look of hunger faded, and then she was back to the same Anila he’d known these past many weeks.

  He was about to plead again when a shadow flitting behind the curtains caught his eye. He moved toward the window. There was a firefinch in the ornamental fig tree outside, a bird with a vivid yellow breast that burned its way up toward the bright orange feathers along its head. He wouldn’t have given it a second thought if it hadn’t been acting so strangely. Most such birds would flit about, hop from branch to branch. They would blink, take in their surroundings, flutter about and little more. Firefinches were nervous birds.

  But not this one. It rested stock still, and seemed to watch Davud as he came to the patio doors and opened them. It turned its head once as he walked over the brick toward the tree.

  “What are you about, then?” he asked.

  It remained perfectly motionless, for all the world one of the preserved birds the traveling shows sometimes brought to the city. It was on the lower branches, close enough to touch. Only when Davud took one more step toward the tree and reached for it did the bird take wing. In moments it had flitted up beyond the walls of the small patio and was gone.

  Chapter 5

  ÇEDA STARED INTO KING ONUR’S EYES. She was doing her best to control her fear but felt exposed and helpless without her ebon blade. Onur snapped his fingers at Beril of Tribe Salmük, who threw River’s Daughter to him. He caught Çeda’s sword and pulled the blade free of the lacquered wooden scabbard. It looked tiny in his massive hands as he inspected the design near the crossguard: a heron wading along a reedy riverbank. An expression of curiosity overcame him, and then a look of understanding, as if the sword’s identity had told him all he needed to know about Çeda and how she’d come to be there.

  “Well, well.” He lifted his eyes and stared at her, his stony face smiling in that grimy, lecherous way of his. “A Maiden lost from her flock.”

  Beril and the others shared a glance. One placed a hand on the grip of her sword.

  Onur waved her away. “She’s harmless enough.” Then he turned and trudged toward the nearby tent with his characteristic limp. “Come, Çedamihn.”

  Far out in the desert, Kerim pleaded with her. Flee! Flee! You must flee!

  His terror for her was so strong she nearly complied. Part of her wanted nothing more than to run, but she knew Onur’s presence here represented a shift in power in the desert, and she’d be a fool to let this chance go, danger or not, so she followed Onur into the tent, watching him carefully for signs of aggression, wary as well of the four women standing beside the wooden throne near the back of the tent. The women, all with shamshirs at their side, were dressed much like Blade Maidens. From the battle skirts to the boots to the bracers and the boiled leather sewn into the fabric. Except the cloth wasn’t black; it was the sandy color of the desert, and their turbans were red, a sign of war in the desert, and their veils were pulled over their faces, hiding all but their eyes.

  Onur practically fell into his throne, as if it pained him to remain standing. “You’ve come a long way,” he said in his deep baritone.

  “As have you.” She nearly added my Lord King, and was glad she hadn’t.

  “How is it that you, that bitch Sümeya’s lap dog, has ended up here in the desert wastes?”

  Sümeya was Çeda’s former commander in the Blade Maidens, their First Warden. Çeda had hoped the news of the battle hadn’t made it this far into the desert, but stories like these, ones that shift the very sands of the desert, traveled as fast as ships could carry them. He might already know some of her reasons for fleeing Sharakhai, which left her with a choice. Should she speak the truth and hope to gain some small amount of trust, or gamble that he didn’t know all of it, and that he wouldn’t learn the truth before Çeda escaped the protection of his tribe?

  She wasn’t sure. It all depended on why Onur had left Sharakhai.

  Knowing the halls of the House of Kings as she did, she could make some guesses. Onur was slovenly. He was brash. He took only his own counsel, and offered his with neither hesitation nor invitation. He was barely tolerated by the other Kings. Had that changed? Had something made the other Kings exile him, or had Onur left on his own? The former seemed unlikely. Onur was stubborn and belligerent—he would have defended his throne to the death if challenged.

  But what if he’d simply grown weary of his life in Sharakhai, of ruling the city with eleven other Kings? Could a man like Onur not return to the desert and rule whatever tribe he wished?

  “Come, child,” Onur snapped, “tell your tale.”

  His reaction to her hesitation, the pinched look on his face, made her decision for her. Revealing more than she needed to Onur, who rarely repaid the trust others placed in him, would be the height of foolishness. “All I may say is that I’m on a mission from King Yusam.”

  Onur laughed deeply, genuinely, though on him it seemed a sort of vulgar foreplay that would lead to violent acts. “May say. You are here in my tribe. You’ve entered my domain. And you’ll share what I will. Now, why are you here in the desert?”

  “I was on Tribe Masal’s lands.”

  “They can no longer make claim to those lands.”

  “They’ve ceded them to you?”

  “I’ve taken them, as I will take the entire eastern reach of the desert.” His brow furrowed; his eyes darkened. “Now out with it. If you force me to ask again, I’ll have these women quarter you alive, then man and god alike will see that you’re made of naught but flesh and blood and bone.”

  “Yusam sent me into the desert the day after the battle. He shared little with me, but I believe he foresaw this meeting in his mere. My only question is how it fits within his grand vision.”

  “Your only question?”

  “Yes.” Çeda had tried her best to sound confident, but there was a note of irritation in Onur’s voice that worried her.

  “From where I sit there are more relevant questions. Such as how you escaped the Night of Endless Swords, with Cahil and Mesut in tow. How you survived while Mesut died and Cahil was almost sent to the tomb that awaits him beneath his palace. Or what, as some have whispered, you had to do with the Wandering King’s death.”

  Onur stood and immediately his women flanked Çeda. As Onur strode forward, his intentions clear, she dropped into a fighting stance and felt for their heartbeats. She managed to find the women’s, but Onur, as strong as his should have been, eluded her completely.

  “Most curious to me is why the gods have seen fit to place you in my waiting palm like a glittering jewel when all I’ve ever done is spit upon them and their gift to the Kings of Sharakhai.” He swung one meaty fist at Çe
da, a blow she easily avoided. “It’s a sign as sure as the moons in the night sky.”

  He swung again, and this time Çeda stepped in and drove one fist deep into his belly. She only just escaped his grasping hand, but was kicked forward by the tribeswoman behind her. Onur charged with a speed that belied his bulk and grabbed her left wrist. Her right she drove into his neck. It struck hard, with all her weight behind it, but Onur took it with little more than a cough.

  She tried to send the heel of her palm up and into his nose, but he snatched her hand and drew her toward him. She had only a split second to turn away before his forehead crashed into her cheek. She saw stars, and took another blow to the left side of her head. One more thudding blow came in from her right and then she was tipping down and rolling blindly along the carpets.

  She stumbled while trying to regain her feet, to the amusement of Onur, who stood over her, a cut on his forehead dripping blood down into his left eye and along his sweaty cheek. He grabbed the front of her dress and pulled her up until they were eye-to-eye. “Do you know what tipped your hand?” Before she could answer, another strong blow came in from his right fist, driving her down to the carpet.

  The world began to spin away, as Onur spoke one last time. “Yusam, the only man I halfway respected in that entire stinking city, died the night of the battle.”

  And then the darkness claimed her.

  * * *

  Çeda woke to the sound of scratching. Her head felt like a smith had been using it for an anvil.

  Not a smith, she thought. Onur.

  Memories of her fight with the Feasting King swam before her. Gods, how fast he’d moved. It wasn’t right for an ox to move so quickly. Yet another thing the gods would one day answer for.

  For all the pain in her head, her limbs felt strangely numb, as if she’d been thrown in an ice bath. Her hands were bound behind her, tied to what felt like an iron spike driven into the unforgiving stone beneath her. She tried to get her fingers around the spike, see if she might pull it loose, but the smallest movements made her head pound so badly she abandoned the exercise.

  The scratching sounds continued. She was both curious and annoyed to realized there were two sorts. One was soft, a scritching sound, like a reed pen on papyrus. The other was harsher. Metallic. Both made the roof of her mouth itch and opening her eyes brought sharp pain from the bright light. She closed them and only after waiting a good long while for the pain to pass did she pry them open once more. She was in a tent. A small one layered in bright, patterned carpets.

  Two women were in the tent with her. One sat cross-legged in the corner, writing in a book, dipping a pen into the nearby well before writing with quick, precise strokes. She gave Çeda a sour glance but then went back to her task.

  The other woman sat on a stool, a sword across her lap. She was scratching something into the blade with an awl. The steel blade was dark, Çeda realized. An ebon blade. Dear gods, it was River’s Daughter. Years ago Çeda would have laughed at the thought of caring about a sword, but she and that blade had been through much together—too much to allow some girl from the desert to carve things into its dark steel.

  “Leave that—” Çeda squinted against the piercing agony that speech brought. She waited for it to subside, again sensing a strange numbness in her frame, then tried again. “You will lay that sword down, now, before I use it to carve things into your skin.”

  The woman looked up. She was several years older than Çeda. Blue tattoos marked her forehead and framed her eyes, trailing along her cheeks and down her chin, making it look as though she were wearing a demon mask. “Speak again you’ll wish our Lord had led you to the farther fields.”

  “I said lay that sword aside.”

  The two women exchanged a look. The one who was writing, the older of the two, nodded, and the other took Çeda’s sword up and stood. She used the flat of the blade to strike Çeda’s hip. “You will remain silent.”

  Çeda felt for her own heartbeat. Even as battered as she was, she became attuned to it as never before. It calmed her. Gave her confidence. The numbness she’d felt earlier had become a prickling beneath her skin. “You’re not worthy to touch that blade.”

  This time the woman aimed for Çeda’s face. She put no great force behind it, but she was quick.

  Çeda was ready, though. She’d felt the woman’s intent before her arm moved. She twisted aside as River’s Daughter whirred past her face and struck the carpets. Rolling back onto her shoulders, Çeda kicked upward. Her heel caught the young woman’s jaw, but that was only part of her purpose. Even as she reeled away, Çeda locked her legs around her sword arm. She pulled down, twisting her hips and legs as she went. The sword spun free, and the woman stumbled into the wall of the tent.

  The other woman was caught by surprise. She threw aside her book and pen and lurched to her feet.

  Çeda felt her own fear and anger coursing through her. Her right hand was hot as windblown embers, as it had been before she’d fallen on Yndris in Sharakhai and beaten her bloody. Then it had been the asir, Havva, working through Çeda. Havva was dead . . . but Kerim was not. This power was his; he was giving her what aid he could.

  There was something odd about his emotions, though. Regret? Sorrow? She couldn’t tell, and there was no time to figure it out.

  She pulled hard on the rope restraining her wrists. It held, but her hand and wrist burned the hotter for it. She tried again, and the rope snapped just as the other woman charged forward, a curving kenshar held in her right hand. She’d not taken two steps before Çeda pressed on her heart, making her cough. Her eyes widened as she stumbled, creating an opening so large Çeda could have ridden a horse through it. Çeda stepped in, blocked the sloppy stab of her knife, and brought her fist so hard across the woman’s face her eyes glazed even before she’d struck the carpets.

  The younger woman was on her feet again, but she was disoriented from Çeda’s kick. She was pushing herself up off the tent wall, ungainly as a waking infant, and then Çeda was on her, a punch to the throat to keep her from crying out and then slipping behind her and snaking one arm around her neck.

  She grasped desperately at Çeda, trying to free herself, but she seemed to know it was a lost cause, which was perhaps why she desperately flung one foot out to catch a small table holding a host of copper bowls. They clattered across the tent, surely alerting the entire camp that something was amiss. Indeed, as the woman went slack, Çeda heard a cry of alarm. Through the tent flaps she glimpsed Onur’s trunk-like legs plodding toward her. He was dragging something behind him. She picked up River’s Daughter and charged toward the opposite wall. Slicing down, she cut through the tough fabric with ease.

  Çeda sprinted toward the edges of the camp, looking for something—a horse, a skiff—she could use to escape. She’d not gone ten strides, however when she heard a booming voice behind her. “Çedamihn Ahyanesh’ala!”

  Onur had sensed her flight. Why else would he have been heading toward her tent so shortly after her attack had begun? But she could still escape into the desert. There were horses tied to a stake behind a sleek caravel. She would take one, find Kerim, and return to the desert—

  “Flee if you wish,” Onur thundered, “but if you do, the one you’re bonded with dies.”

  Çeda slowed, then stopped in her tracks.

  Kerim. He’d been the cause of her numbness. Onur had been stifling his presence and Kerim had still somehow lent her strength so that she might escape, knowing full well he would remain under Onur’s control.

  She hadn’t considered how completely the Kings could dominate the asirim—a terrible, foolish mistake on her part. She should have sent Kerim far away the moment she saw Onur.

  She turned to find Onur stalking across the sand, dragging Kerim by his rags as if he weighed no more than a gutted lamb. The asirim had always seemed so godlike, almost otherworldly—she’d neve
r considered that they might succumb to trauma as mortal man did. Yet here Kerim was, his limbs dragging, his head swinging awkwardly, his eyes were drunken and half-lidded.

  With one hand, Onur heaved Kerim, tossing him to the sand at his feet. In his other hand he held a great spear, its broad head etched with ancient sigils. He lifted it to one shoulder, the tip pointed vaguely at Kerim’s chest. “How very tender-hearted you are. I’d half thought you were bonded to this pathetic soul against your will and would be glad to be rid of him.” The spear’s tip slowly pierced Kerim’s skin. Black blood oozed. Kerim did no more than moan and twist gently away.

  “Leave him!”

  Onur raised his eyebrows. “Drop your blade.”

  There was fear in Çeda, strong and building, that Onur would kill Kerim no matter what she did, but what else could she do? She couldn’t stand by and let Onur kill him, a soul who had done so much to protect her.

  She threw River’s Daughter to the sand.

  Onur’s amused expression deepened across his flabby face. “I’d rather hoped we would cross blades. I haven’t slaked my thirst on the blood of a Maiden in many long years.” He shrugged and motioned to the men and women by his side to take Çeda. “Another day, then.” When Çeda’s hands were bound once more, he turned and plodded away.

  Chapter 6

  THE CAMP MOVED ON the day after Çeda gave herself up to Onur. She was forced to help tear down the tents and pack them onto the waiting ships, and then she was chained to the hull in the hold of their largest galleon. She hadn’t been told where they were going, but she’d gleaned several clues as the ships were being made ready: the dour looks on everyone’s faces, their worried glances toward Onur and, while Çeda was carrying things aboard the ship, she’d seen men and women training with shield and spear on the sand. Onur had led them, shouting commands, the ranks of desert soldiers moving in disciplined order. Beyond them, archers fired into dummies made of hay-stuffed canvas. Even the ballistas were being fired, some releasing grapnels, others long bolts, others clay pots that, while not alight now, would be filled with oil and lit before being launched on the enemy.