The Dark Citadel

by Michael Wallace

  Honor. Join the Brotherhood of the Thorne and become a Knight Temperate. Repair the tatters of his family’s honor. He owed as much to Kaya, if not to himself.

  “Yes, I’ll care for her myself,” he said. “Thank you.” He couldn’t help but notice that Whelan had called him a man. Darik passed a look to Markal. “And I’ll keep the secret.”

  Whelan said, “You’ll owe us each fourteen dinarii plus usury when we reach Eriscoba. You’ll have to find some way to pay off your debt.”

  “Of course.”

  #

  Whelan didn’t wait long to spring their escape. The next day, he pulled Darik aside for a moment while Markal haggled with a customer in the market. The customer had light skin like a barbarian, but that wasn’t unusual in Balsalom, since Eriscoba lay just over the mountains to the west. Witness Whelan.

  The customer wanted to sample the ginger cakes, the sesame bread, the sweet meats, but couldn’t decide what to buy. All the while, he held out the promise of a major purchase, perhaps enough that they could sell the rest of Graiyan’s goods by early afternoon and their own wares until the Grand Bazaar closed at seven bells.

  The man weighed a heavy purse in his hand and sighed. “I need enough to feed my wife’s sister and her seven starving whelps for three days, but if it doesn’t taste right she’ll complain to my wife, and my wife, in turn, will make me wish I was lying in the road, gnawed by wild dogs.”

  Markal blinked nervously. This time of year, with the fall festivals coming, they’d sell their goods anyway, but he took his haggling seriously. “Take the cakes and I’ll give you a loaf of soured millet. Two dinarii, six crana.”

  The man shook his head and weighed his purse again. Darik could see him struggling against spending that much money, although Darik had no idea if the man’s story was true, or just a story. There was no question that Graiyan’s goods were more expensive than most coming out of the baker’s corner, but from the way the man’s eyes widened when he tasted the ginger cakes, he’d also appreciated their quality.

  “I don’t know. Two and six?” He let out a low whistle. “A lot of money. How about two?”

  Markal groaned and threw up his hands. “Go somewhere else then, and stop eating my food before I call the watchman!”

  Laughing at the old slave’s haggling techniques, Darik let Whelan pull him aside. They stepped toward a troupe of brightly colored musicians playing for coins in the squat shadow cast by a tan mudstone building that encroached on the edge of the square. A placard hanging from the door was painted with the coin-laden scales of the moneylenders guild.

  Darik glanced through the slats on the window, instinctive dislike rising like bile when he saw the moneylender himself. Moneylenders had ruined his father with their usury, charging higher and higher rates as Father’s situation grew more desperate. Darik couldn’t hear the conversation, but gestures told him enough. The moneylender sat on a velvet cushion haggling with a man squatting across from him on the carpet; the borrower trembled in anticipation at the huge pile of gold coins stacked between them. The moneylender gnawed on a joint of meat, occasionally gesturing at the money and shrugging as if to say the money itself was a trifling thing.

  The midday chimes of the bakers tower turned Darik’s attention. The master baker had commissioned the white stone minaret at the edge of the Grand Bazaar two years ago to match the bell towers of the other guilds, draining the small guild’s coffers dry in the process.

  Other towers joined in. The troupe of barbarians struggled to be heard against the bells. The musicians scrambled together a grating mix of lutes and barbarian gut pipes that didn’t harmonize well with the guild towers.

  Darik looked back at Markal haggling harder than ever, regretting that the music and the shouts of a slave auction further into the square drowned out the show.

  “Did you see what just happened?” Whelan asked.

  Darik shook his head. “With Markal and the man trying to buy the bread? No. What do you mean?”

  Whelan smiled. “Good. Then hopefully nobody else did either.” He explained. “We feared that the man might be followed so he pretended to be a customer. If the man told Markal that Hasdini’s man wanted three dinarii for worse bread, that meant he’d hidden our supplies where the north aqueduct meets the Nye River. If he offered two, which he did, that means that we’ll find them in the Tombs of the Kings, just beyond the west wall of the city.”

  Darik was surprised. “I had no idea that Markal could put on such an act.”

  “Oh, he wasn’t. The two dinarii offering price was solely for my benefit. I imagine our friend from the smugglers guild will haggle for a few more minutes, make a couple of small purchases, then leave Markal grumbling.”

  Darik smiled at the thought. He understood Whelan’s caution. Slaves were too costly, and Eriscoba too close. The watchmans guild closely watched the city gates for escaping slaves.

  They made their way back to Graiyan’s canopy, where the customer moved on with his bag of bread. Grinning, Markal marked notches in the stick with his knife to count the number of loaves sold. Whelan had been wrong about that much, anyway. It appeared that Markal’s haggling had convinced the smuggler of the quality of their wares, despite other motives.

  In the center of the square, the giant bells atop the merchants minaret chimed, drowning out the smaller bell towers of the other guilds. The merchants purposely started their song late to remind the other guilds how much wealthier and more powerful they were. Indeed, their tower stood taller and broader than any other in the city, save Toth’s View near the Great Gates, and the stone carvings and gold leaf offsetting the white stone made it more elegant than any but the artists tower.

  The bells, the barbarian pipers, and the shouts of merchants hawking their wares blended into a noisy cacophony. Darik’s stomach churned with just as much vigor. Tonight, they would run. Whelan didn’t need to remind him what happened to runaway slaves after capture. Public castration, followed by a short, unhappy life in the salt mines.

  #

  That night, Whelan and Darik told Markal about the transaction in the bazaar as they made their final preparations. The old man was annoyed that he’d been duped by his co-conspirators, but Whelan convinced him it had been necessary.

  Whelan turned to Darik. “I’ll knock on your door one hour after Graiyan takes his evening wine.”

  Every night after his wife went to sleep, the baker crept down to the kitchen and unlocked the wine chest and drank two glasses. Darik could hear his heavy steps past his door shortly thereafter.

  “And then what? We just walk out the front door?”

  “The watchman keeps a close eye on the bakery. We can’t just walk out the door. No, you look out the window and I’ll go down to the street and toss you a rope. We’ll slip out the back alley.”

  One problem with that plan, Darik noted. No mention of Kaya. He opened his mouth to ask, but stopped himself. No doubt Whelan’s omission was intentional. How else could the man omit the reasoning behind Darik’s escape in the first place? With all of his earlier talk, he had no intention of making a dangerous trek through the mountains with a two-year-old child in tow.

  Darik lay in bed a few hours later, formulating his true plan. Outside the window, the bell towers chimed curfew. Slaves chanted as they marched home from the mines and whips cracked against their backs to speed them along. Crickets chirped, hanging in tiny cages at the threshold of every house, their songs frightening away the spirits of the dead. A cool breeze blew in through the window, carrying spiced desert air.

  The success of his plan depended upon two unknowns. First, could he keep Kaya quiet? And second, did he have the nerve to move fast enough?

  The floorboards creaked overhead and Darik lay quiet, listening. Graiyan, going down to the kitchen for his wine. As predictable as the chiming of the merchants tower. Graiyan would pause at the top of the stairs to see if Elethra woke and called out to him, but she never did. In fact, if Darik thre
w open his door, he’d hear her snoring. Two months ago she’d slept through a thunderstorm that blew down the thorn tree growing in front of the bakery.

  Graiyan, however, tossed and turned all night, sometimes pacing the hallways when he couldn’t sleep. Hence the wine to soothe his nerves. Darik didn’t dare creep into the room while the man slept. While he drank his wine, however, his wife slept alone, and Darik’s sister in the room beyond. Darik would creep into the baker’s unlocked room, take Kaya and return to wait for Whelan’s knock on the door.

  Graiyan’s heavy feet creaked on the stairs. He walked slowly down the hall, stepping lightly past each door. He tried to keep his night drinking a secret, but all of the slaves and servants knew. No doubt Elethra did as well when she saw the extra wine purchases on the ledger. Graiyan stepped into the kitchen farther down the hall and pulled the door shut behind him.

  Darik dropped from bed, his feet bare against the cool stone floor. He would move much more quietly up the stairs than the heavy baker; he had plenty of practice stealing out of his father’s house at night to play in the children’s garden. But as he turned toward his bedroom door, he heard a sound that turned his careful plans into disarray.

  “Boy!” a voice cried softly outside the window.

  Darik froze at the door, horrified. He hurried back to the window and threw open the curtains. Whelan stood in the street below, face pinched and nervous. He held a small olive-oil lamp in his right hand. No, Darik thought. Please, not yet. Whelan was supposed to wait until after Graiyan returned from his wine, then knock on the door first.

  Darik looked down the alley for Markal but saw no sign of the older slave. “What happened?”

  “No time to explain. Here, catch this rope.” He threw a rope up to the window. Darik caught it and tied it to the curtain post.

  He looked down to Whelan. “Wait a moment.” He held up his hand at the expression on Whelan’s face. “Please, just a minute. I’ll be right back. My sister.”

  “No! Darik.”

  Darik turned from the window, opened the door and ran down the hall, then up the stairs toward Graiyan’s bedroom, all caution fled.

  The stairs creaked their alarm to any listeners, but Darik didn’t dare stop. He had to get Kaya out and back to his room before Whelan gave up and left. If Graiyan found him with Kaya...well, he’d been down that unhappy road in his mind more often than he cared to admit.

  He heard Elethra snoring even before he pushed open the heavy oak door. A lock secured the room, but the baker didn’t want to jangle keys while he stole in and out so he’d left it unsecured.

  Darik pushed open the door. Moonlight trickled in through the window. Elethra lay on a heavy pillow, her hair drawn into braids behind her head. She snored loudly. Elethra was a large-boned woman and not particularly pretty, less so without the kohl that she smeared under her eyes every morning. But she was no ogress, buying figs and sweetmeats on feast days to bake into special pastries for the slaves. A small kernel of guilt gnawed at Darik when he imagined her grief.

  But he had had no time to entertain guilt. He rushed past her bed and stepped into the nursery in the back, where his sister slept in her bed. Graiyan had traded goods with a man from the artists guild, who’d sent an apprentice to paint Kaya’s rooms with pictures of sun flowers and beasts. A small lamp burned in an alcove along the wall; Darik remembered that Kaya woke with nightmares and Graiyan no doubt lit the lamp to soothe her to sleep. But the lamp light guttered along the wall, making gorgons and dragon wasps dance in the shadows. The apprentice artist had magic in his work, and Darik thought the struggling, moving figures in his bestiary were unlikely to soothe Kaya’s night fears.

  Darik pulled back the blanket and picked up his sister. She stirred in his arms, then rubbed her eyes and looked at him. She smiled in recognition.

  “Shh,” he urged. She said nothing but snuggled her head against his shoulder, yawning. The curls on her head poured over his shoulder, tickling his neck.

  He hurried from the nursery, past the baker’s snoring wife and was about to leave the room when Kaya lifted her head. “Bye, bye Mama.”

  Instantly Elethra, who Darik thought could have slept soundly in the midst of the Harvester’s kennel, surrounded by baying hounds, sat upright in her bed. All vestiges of sleep fled from her face.

  She opened her mouth and screamed.

  Chapter Two

  Eleven years before Cragyn murdered the high khalif and seized the Iron Throne of Veyre for himself, assassins murdered the khalifa of Balsalom and two of her sons while they slept. Then the five deadly shadows slipped through the royal apartments to finish their job by killing the khalif and his remaining children in the tower rooms.

  But one of the assassins tripped over a harem girl lying on pillows just inside the khalif’s darkened room, and she cried out before he could silence her. Within seconds, a dozen guardsmen filled the room, rushing to take the five men alive. The first four assassins turned their knives on themselves, while the fifth, who had killed the harem girl, grabbed the startled, groggy khalif, and plunged his poisoned dagger into the man’s chest.

  “Seize him!” the pasha of the guard shouted, and the guardsmen pushed past the four dying men to grab the final assassin before he could turn his dagger on himself.

  But the assassin leaped toward the window, just out of reach of the pursuing guardsmen. He swept aside the curtains and hurled himself through with a triumphant shout. By the time the guardsmen reached the window, the assassin lay crumpled on the flagstone, five floors below.

  The grand vizier arrived a few minutes later, fully expecting to find the khalif already dead. When he saw the man sitting against his pillows, sipping mint tea, Saldibar almost wept with relief. Blood trickled through the khalif’s night paijams and he dabbed a cloth against the wound.

  “Not poisoned, eh?” the khalif asked, managing a weak smile. “Else it would have killed me for sure. Ah, but I feel a burning in my limbs.”

  He did not yet know what had happened to the khalifa or his two oldest sons, Saldibar realized, or he would not feel so proud of his own survival. The grand vizier picked up the assassin’s blade where it lay on the floor. Steel with a carved Veyrian handle. He wiped the blade on the pillow and was not surprised to see flecks of dried yellow along the blade. His hand trembled.

  Guardsmen dragged the bodies from the room, starting with the assassins. The khalif looked at the dead harem girl and his smile faltered.

  “The golden bloom,” Saldibar said, dropping the knife to the ground. “One of the most deadly poisons.”

  Faces paled in the room. Best that they know now, the grand vizier thought. The truth of the matter would be obvious soon enough.

  “Then I am dead already,” the khalif said.

  Yes, Saldibar thought, anguish turning at his stomach when he thought of the horrible death that awaited his master. He looked at the harem girl. She’d have taken the bulk of the poison from the blade. But what was left would suffice. It might take a few months, or even years, but it would kill the khalif just the same.

  But which of the khalif’s sons and daughters could succeed the man? There was Omar, drunk with his lust for power. Give him the scepter and his ambition would grow until it engulfed the western khalifates in war. Or Marialla, who thought herself more beautiful than the finest peacock and had half the sense of the plainest sparrow in the gardens.

  No, he thought. None of the older ones will do. There is only Kallia.

  Kallia Saffa. The blood of seventeen dead kings and queens ran through her veins, a lineage that lasted from the days when her ancestors built Balsalom over the ruins of Syrmarria, a great city destroyed in the Tothian Wars. That blood also ran in her brothers and sisters, but she was the best of them.

  But she was barely fourteen years old, still embroiled in the petty intrigues of the palace children, although Saldibar suspected she found little pleasure in such games. He turned back to the khalif to plant the seeds that
would make Kallia’s ascension inevitable.

  #

  Kallia was not alone.

  She had retired to the gardens to read a book of love poetry pilfered from the library while her tutor dozed. Gustau always fell asleep during her history lessons, and today when he’d nodded, she’d slipped the poetry book into her robes. Later that afternoon, when Gustau released her from her studies to go with her sisters to etiquette training, she went instead to the gardens to read the book.

  She’d always gone to etiquette training, but in the years since her mother’s death, etiquette training had stretched to four hours a day. Other lessons had increased in length as well. But for stolen moments, she found herself under someone’s instruction from breakfast to bedtime.

  Kallia hated etiquette training, not so much for the training itself, but for the other girls at the dinners and dressing lessons, the daughters of her father’s viziers and ministers. Her sister Marialla was too far above them, and the khalif’s other daughters too young, so they focused their nasty games on Kallia. They would speak aloud about how homely Kallia was, while never uttering a single word directly to her. When the girls napped on pillows in the heat of the afternoon, Kallia would be awakened by a dozen pinching hands.

  Kallia’s vain, preening sister Marialla was not much better and the younger sisters followed the older girl’s every move. None of them paid any attention to Kallia’s torment.

  So Kallia was quite happy that afternoon to find the maids’ attention lagging. She slipped away from the cursed training toward the gardens. Instead of cutting straight through the courtyard, she took the long road through the bestiary. Her father had collected the statues of every beast and monster to be found across the breadth of Mithyl. There were griffins and dragons and winged horses, and one creature so delicately carved that its snarl almost came alive when you looked at it. A fire salamander, her tutor told her.

  Past the statuary, Kallia worked her way into a back corner of the gardens, eager to read the book of poetry. This edge of the palace gardens was designed for maximum privacy. Fig trees and grape vines tangled the walls, while a narrow path wound its way through the trees to stop at secret fountains and briars of wild roses, each spot graced with a polished stone bench. For nearly an hour Kallia sat on one of these benches, her only companions a pair of monkeys sitting in the tree overhead, arguing over a fig.