by David Hair
‘I wasn’t bedding her,’ he replied stonily. ‘She is nefara.’
Jamil raised an eyebrow, then shrugged. ‘None of my business,’ he said sceptically. ‘Come, let’s get you into your room before Gatoz comes looking for you. He’s going to want a strip of your hide for standing up to him in front of the men.’
Kazim let Jamil lead him back to his room, but he pushed him away when he tried to enter. As he heard the door bolted behind him he started fuming inside.
Even Jamil doesn’t trust me now. Or maybe he thinks he’s protecting me.
He sat on his bed, feeling useless. He flexed his hands in front of himself, studying his palms. The delicate, hard-earned pact he shared with Elena seemed vital now, in ways he couldn’t even describe to himself. If he could not persuade Gatoz that she was more use to the shihad as an ally than a slave, she was destined for a slow death locked in a cage where she would be subjected to multiple rape and repeated pregnancies until her womb was no longer any use, and at the end, death without burial … and if she did not quicken—
He silently promised her that he’d save her from such a fate, one way or another.
He had no idea how much time had passed when he finally heard the bolts on his door drawn back. It was dark outside, the new moon a thin arc covering half the sky. As Gatoz entered, his hands crackled with energy, and all the candles in the room flared to life. Kazim was suddenly conscious that his own gnosis was burned away; he was near helpless against even the least of the men here. The emptiness inside, the hollow space where his gnosis had been, echoed inside him.
Gatoz stalked towards him. ‘Well, boy?’
He looked up, trying to quell his desire to lash out. ‘What?’
‘You’ve been here four months. What have you been doing?’
What indeed? Kazim explained in as flat a voice as he could – keep it factual, don’t sound attached to her – starting by relating how Elena had rescued him when he was dying from Mara Secordin’s venom, how they’d found they both wished to kill Gurvon Gyle and so had agreed to work together.
‘We were almost ready to move,’ he added. ‘She has showed me her Rondian fighting and gnosis skills. We were planned to return to Brochena at the turn of the year and carry out our mission.’
Gatoz pursed his lips, looking as if this were all interesting, but quite irrelevant. ‘Gyle is no longer a target,’ he said baldly. ‘We were preparing to move back into Kesh when your message reached us. We flew here as soon as we heard.’
Kazim swallowed and tried to frame one final plea. ‘She’s on our side, Gatoz. I swear it.’ But if Gyle was no longer a target, he knew Gatoz would ignore him. ‘Gyle is still an enemy,’ he repeated.
‘Of course he is,’ Gatoz agreed. ‘But he is not our target for now.’ He put a hand on Kazim’s head as if he were talking to a child. ‘Listen, boy, Rashid favours you, for what you might become. But all I see is a feckless child who is sulking because he can’t play with his toys. If a soldier refused to pick up his sword and insisted on fighting with his bare hands instead, it would not be tolerated, would it? Nor would he last. Rashid says you can be an asset, and therefore we tolerate you.’ Gatoz dropped his voice to a menacing growl. ‘But it’s pissing me off. You hear me?’
Kazim hung his head.
‘I do not tolerate the sort of shit you give out from anyone, but Rashid says I must. That’s a shame, because I’d like to punch your pretty face in.’
And I’d like to cut your throat. Kazim couldn’t stop himself from glaring back at the other man, wishing he had a weapon – any weapon—
Gatoz poked him in the chest. ‘I’m prepared to think the white witch has warped your head. Maybe you don’t even know how wrapped around her fingers you are.’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ Kazim said hoarsely.
‘Then how was it?’ Gatoz asked him. ‘Jamil says you didn’t even fuck her.’ He snickered. ‘Then again, she probably doesn’t want some mudskin’s lingum inside her precious white yoni.’
Kazim found himself trembling with the effort of not lashing out. ‘She’s not like that—’
‘They’re all like that, boy,’ Gatoz scoffed. ‘Women are like crows, they pick at a man until there’s nothing left but bones. They’re only good for one thing.’ He spat on the floor. ‘Think on it, boy. Are you with us or not? Because we’re flying south to war and Rashid expects you to be with us, and filled with holy fire. I wouldn’t let him down if I was you.’
Kazim hung his head. ‘Am I a prisoner?’
Gatoz appraised him carefully. ‘Until someone can use mysticismgnosis to check the inside of your head, I’ve got to treat you as suspect, so for tonight, you’re going to stay in here.’ He straightened, looking around, then with a gesture, sealed the windows shut with glittering wards that flared, then faded to invisibility.
‘You don’t need to lock me in,’ Kazim said, hating how small his voice sounded.
‘Boy, I think I do. And I’m the one who decides.’ He strolled nonchalantly towards the door.
Kazim hung his head. From the bottom of what felt like a pit of despair, he asked, ‘What will you do to Elena?’
An ugly look crossed Gatoz’s face and he paused in the doorway. ‘She’s got the only yoni in this dump and I’m going to use it.’ He cocked his head and smiled at Kazim. The smile never reached his eyes. ‘And knowing you’re pining for her will just make it all the sweeter.’
Red-hot hatred blazed behind Kazim’s eyes, so fierce he could barely see. How he kept from leaping at the man he could not tell. ‘She’s on blood-purdah,’ he started babbling, seeking any excuse that might stop Gatoz from defiling her. ‘She is polluted – she is nefara. Your soul—’
Gatoz looked at him in surprise, then roared with laughter. ‘You believe in that shit?’ he hooted derisively. ‘Boy, when you’re a little older, you’ll see the lies of the Scriptualists for what they are.’ He backed away, measuring Kazim with his eyes. ‘Don’t do anything stupid, boy. Think of where your future lies.’
Then he was gone and the door bolt clanged behind him. As Kazim watched the door in despair, light flared about the frame: Gatoz had added a gnostic seal for good measure.
Kazim was trapped. He sat alone in the darkened room, fresh tears glistening in the candlelight.
*
Elena surfaced in a wet sea of pain. Her face felt like a mallet had been taken to it, and her stomach muscles throbbed where she’d been punched. For a few moments four lights floated unsteadily in front of her before resolving into two candles high on the opposite wall. She tried to pull her arms to her chest, but manacles held them spread apart. She could rise maybe six inches off the pallet before the tautness of the chains prevented anything further.
She sagged back, panting. Two flies were crawling across the dried blood on her face. She shook her head, and they lifted off for a moment, then buzzed back down and settled again.
No. Please, no – not this.
Clearly Kazim had contacted his Hadishah friends. The last sight of him, his arm slung companionably over the shoulder of one of her captors, tore at her soul. She’d invested so much in the boy – and she would have sworn they were beginning to understand each other. She hated to think that she could have been wrong about him.
I saved his life – not once, but twice. How could he have done that—?
But Cera did the same, her callous memory reminded her, and her heart sank. There must be something in her that was wrong, that everyone she cared about would betray her …
She groaned and tried to move her legs, but they were bound too, one foot to either bed-post, holding her legs spread apart. She didn’t need to imagine what came next.
She could almost hear Gurvon’s voice: ‘Well, old girl: this is what you get for trusting people. What happened to you? You used to be the most cynical bitch alive. Still, it’s only what you deserve.’
The door opened and Magister Stivor Sindon came in, wrapped in a thick velve
t cloak, his pate gleaming, his chubby, bearded face looking faintly amused. He settled on a chair beside the bed and lit a pipe. ‘So, Elena Anborn. You’ve come down a long way in the world.’
‘Get me out of this and I’ll work for you,’ she said. She didn’t expect for a heartbeat he’d do that, but she had to at least go through the motions.
He puffed at his pipe for a moment as if contemplating her offer, then the wry smile on his face dropped and he said coldly, ‘Don’t insult my intelligence, Elena. You’re worthless to me. And I certainly never liked you.’
She gave up the pleading immediately. ‘Totally mutual, Sindon.’
‘Ah, that’s more like the Elena Anborn I know.’ He tutted amiably. ‘Gatoz will be here shortly. I’ve let him know you’re awake.’ He pulled a faux-distressed face. ‘The man’s an animal. Pure appetite. And always hungry.’
She looked away. I won’t beg.
‘What I don’t understand is why, Elena. Clearly you and Gyle had the Nesti tied up between you – don’t bother trying to explain why you went to the trouble of aiding both sides last year, I’m sure it’s too devious, even for me. But why did you vanish when our attack on Gyle failed in Julsep?’ He sighed when she didn’t respond and asked, ‘So have you genuinely fallen out with him this time, eh?’
She stared into space, wishing the man gone, wanting nothing more than to get this messy rape and murder thing over with. She’d always known her life would end like this. It was part of the game, after all.
Sindon rattled on, ‘The boy, Kazim Makani: you know what he is, don’t you? He’s Dokken. He murdered Antonin Meiros and drank his soul – he’s got power to burn and then some. I expect you already know this. Did you intend to make him your pet assassin, to get back at Gyle?’
No. I took him in out of curiosity, and then I began to care, she admitted to herself. It wasn’t something she would ever say out loud. Then she wondered, Is it better to love foolishly than not to love at all? Except it wasn’t love, was it? It was just another might-have-been on the way to an unmarked grave or a midden for hungry jackals.
The door opened and Gatoz strode in.
She winced at the sight of him. He oozed brutality.
Gatoz flicked a finger towards the door, indicating Sindon should leave; he didn’t bother to speak a word. The Ordo Costruo magus threw Elena a look that was completely without sympathy, then left.
Gatoz locked the door behind him with bolt and gnosis, then came and stood over her. He didn’t speak, not even to taunt her, and his silence was in its own way more frightening than any threat or promise of violence or death. Men who talked could be swayed. But this one had that peculiar look to him; he was both fanatic and pragmatist, a man for whom the cause was everything and the means irrelevant. She’d met men like him in the Kirkegarde. They’d made her blood run cold.
He pulled from his belt a long, wickedly curved knife. The well-honed blade gleamed in the candlelight as he used it to flick up the hem of her nightshift.
He stared at her cleft in silence for a long, long time, then he raised his flinty eyes and she could feel them crawling over her like a physical sensation. His hatred – that he despised her – was clear, and so too was his brutal strength. He would make this hurt, and he would feel no guilt in doing so.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ she said in his language, trying to pitch her voice somewhere between pride and pleading, to appeal to his better nature.
‘No, I do,’ he replied. His voice was low, level, completely objective. ‘It is both expected and required.’
He slid closer, pushed her thighs apart and sniffed her, then pushed her hem up above her breasts and examined the muscles of her stomach, prodding with the hilt of his vicious dagger.
‘Let me tell you why. While we investigated Kazim’s disappearance, we spoke to many Jhafi. All praised you, for deigning to take our part. I saw little girls in the street, waving sticks and shouting, playing at being Alhana the White Witch. They truly wanted to be you.’
Good for them, she thought, unable to tear her eyes from the blade as it caressed her belly.
‘You are a sickness, Alhana. A woman’s place is very carefully defined in the Kalistham, and for stepping outside those boundaries – and for encouraging others to follow – for that alone you deserve to be brought low. That you are magi, white and a godless infidel only adds weight to the need to publicly destroy you. We must make any woman who thinks of your fate shudder. So that is what we will do.’
The low, seething fury behind his lifeless voice crushed her. She felt her face empty of colour as sick fear took over. It was as if he saw her degradation as some divinely decreed task.
‘What—?’ She choked on the question, and couldn’t finish the words. After all, she already knew …
He reversed the dagger in his grip and showed it to her. ‘Tonight, I am going to use you as you have never before been used. A woman’s place is on her back, in service of her man. The only words that will leave your mouth will be in praise of my manhood, and cries of pleasure. You will gyrate your hips for me like the whore that you are, and you will seek to climax when I do. Should you reach that release, I will refrain using this blade on you, but should you not climax as I do, then I will carve off a part of your body – your ears, or your nose, or your scalp, or an eye, perhaps. You need none of those to bear children for the Hadishah.’
Oh Kore Oh Kore please please please help me please save me—
‘And when we are done and you are pregnant, I will parade you, a mutilated horror, through the streets of Javon as an example to all young Amteh women: this is what becomes of females who seek to elevate themselves.’ His eyes bored into hers. ‘So do I need to tell you more of what will happen if you resist?’
She shook her head mutely. Her belly was churning and her raising panic was barely contained.
‘Excellent.’
He placed the blade on the table beside the bed, and then slowly began to unbuckle his belt.
*
Kazim stared out the window at the night. If he raised his hand to the open window, light crackled and pushed the digit away: the wards were there to keep him in.
Think of where your future lies.
Was this his future now? Was he to be nothing more than a plaything of powerful men who would reward or punish him as they saw fit? Men who would enslave a woman, even one who shared their goals, just to breed more killers; men who would manipulate him and twist his every desire to their own purposes; men who had not earned their great gift but been born with it, but who nonetheless strutted about as if they deserved worship.
Gatoz and Rashid are no better than the Rondian magi, he admitted at last.
He could not wipe Elena’s face from his mind: that last look, betrayed and confused, frightened – helpless, when she never was helpless. Superimposed over that was the sight of her, sword in hand as they trained: poised and alert, perfectly balanced, infinitely capable.
I lost Ramita.
I don’t want to lose Elena too.
And that led to the thought he truly could not face: of Gatoz, and what he would do to her. He felt his blood sizzle in his veins and found himself groping around for a weapon – any weapon … But of course they’d all been taken from him.
This is the trust they have in me …
The bolt outside drew back amidst a small flash of energy and the door opened. He wanted it to be Jamil, offering to help, but instead it was Haroun.
Succour for my soul, he thought with a new cynical bitterness that shocked him so much he almost expected Ahm to strike him down – but all that happened was that Haroun said something in a low voice to someone outside and the door shut again. New wards flared – presumably set by a guard-mage outside, the part of his brain that could still analyse noted.
Haroun approached cautiously. ‘Kazim, my brother.’ He seized Kazim by the shoulders and kissed both cheeks. He looked genuinely distraught at this situation. ‘What has this ja
dugara done to you?’
Kazim shook his head. ‘Nothing at all.’
Haroun looked troubled. ‘Brother, I doubt you would even be aware of how different you are, but I must tell you: you are not the Kazim we love.’
He dismissed the notion instantly and instead asked, ‘Can a nefara woman be redeemed?’
Haroun’s eyebrows lifted, then he frowned and his face took on the familiar look of studied intensity he reserved for the deepest of theological questions. ‘Of course a woman of the Amteh can be redeemed – but I must presume you are talking about this jadugara, this Ahlana woman, yes?’ He smiled sadly. ‘That is impossible, my brother. Those spawned by Shaitan are beyond Ahm’s love.’
‘But you’ve told me that Ahm loves all Creation—’
‘All of His Creation, Kazim. The spawn of Shaitan are outside of his ambit. They are less than the mud in the fields, less than the shit from a cow’s bowels. They are pollution itself. Such is the being with whom you have been consorting.’
Kazim nodded slowly, sadly. He noticed that Haroun’s eating knife was missing from his scabbard: another indication that he really was a prisoner here. The darkness closed in on him.
‘Kazim, I will plead your case,’ the young Scriptualist said gently. ‘Gatoz will understand that you have been bewitched. I doubt you will even be flogged. An example will be made of the Rondian whore, of course – perhaps her limbs will be lopped off; that will not impair her breeding, but it might be sufficient retribution for her perfidy.’
Kazim swallowed a mouthful of bile. ‘Thank you, Haroun,’ he croaked. ‘You’ve made everything clear to me now.’ Utterly clear.
‘I am here to serve, Kazim.’ Haroun preened a little. ‘Magister Sindon will be here shortly to examine your mind. If what the jadugara has done to you is simple, he may even be able to restore you himself.’
Kazim put his arm around the skinny Scriptualist’s shoulders as if in affection and said softly, ‘Thank you for coming.’
Haroun beamed with pride as Kazim slid his arm around further.
