by David Hair
Waqar’s anger dissipated. He sensed the man really was doing all he could – and if he was the best healer in the city, then his mother was in deep trouble. ‘One of my friends is a healer: perhaps she can help?’ When Ormutz nodded eagerly – probably at the thought of having someone else to blame – Waqar sent a gnostic call to Fatima; she was of stronger blood than Ormutz, even if she had less experience.
Once she was ensconced with Ormutz, he left them to it and went to find Tarita.
When he reached the Elephant Fountain, near the Southern Gates of the palace complex, there was no sign of Tarita, so he sat down to wait – at which point a sweeper-girl he’d completely failed to notice waddled on her haunches to the end of the bench and whispered, ‘Sal’Ahm.’
‘Oh!’ he exclaimed. She might as well have been invisible, he realised, embarrassed. ‘I didn’t see you. Will you sit?’
She ignored the offer, instead squatting at a nearby drain, pulling the filthy mulch out with her bare hands and patting it about the roots of a bush. ‘I’ll stay down here. Princes and servants don’t sit as equals,’ she reminded him.
She had a slightly stiff-backed way of moving, he noticed, as if she’d not fully recovered from an injury. And she stank, well past the point of disguise in his view. ‘Can’t you at least wash occasionally?’ he muttered.
‘You know, nothing deters rape like a bad smell and fresh pus,’ she said lightly. ‘I’ve been in contact with my master and he wants to meet you. We know that you examined the murder scenes; we’d like to know what you found, especially as the investigation officially closed well before you stopped looking.’
That told him that she had been watching him for some time – and apparently all that took was to look like a servant. He’d always considered himself observant, but he was fast revising that opinion. ‘Who do you think is behind this?’
‘Well, I don’t think they were Hadishah: they were too competent.’
He had to smile at that. ‘Volsai? Ordo Costruo? Merozain? Javonesi spies?’
She grinned, and her teeth were better than he’d expected. She was clearly younger than him, but there was something about her that suggested she’d packed much into her years. ‘Unlikely, no, no and no. There were four of them, each wearing these strange masks. Lantric, ai?’
‘Ai, but our people saw only three—’
‘Your mother mentioned a “Felix” mask, so with Ironhelm, Beak and Heartface, that’s four. Perhaps I could learn more if you allowed me into the royal suite?’
‘They’re cleaning it tomorrow.’
‘Then best we do it tonight.’
Meeting her alone after dark would be a leap of faith, but Waqar was inclined to trust her.
*
‘This way,’ Waqar murmured as he opened the deserted royal suite from the inside and slipped Tarita in through an unguarded servants’ entrance. She was dressed as three hours before, and in the confined space smelled even worse. He took her into the living quarters – the bodies were all gone: the funerals of all but the real Salim had taken place three days after the assassinations. Salim’s state funeral was scheduled for two days’ time.
He decided not to tell her about the strange gnostic traces he’d found – she was too much of an unknown still – so he let her examine the scorch-marks and bloodstains and draw her own conclusions. The gnostic traces had broken down by now anyway.
‘Take me to the Walled Garden,’ she said eventually, sounding disappointed.
As they made their way through the silent halls, he asked, ‘How did you gain the gnosis? Through birth, or pregnancy?’ A woman pregnant to a mage sometimes gained the gnosis; she’d be roughly half as powerful as her child.
‘Perhaps,’ she said evasively. ‘Show me where you were attacked.’
The garden was empty, but the trees were filled with squalling birds, the ‘evening chorus’, as the poets generously called the cacophony. Waqar showed Tarita where he’d fought Ironhelm and Heartface and she hunkered down and sniffed the place like a hound. ‘Too much time has passed,’ she muttered.
He took her back to where he’d waited for Salim and a memory resurfaced. ‘There was a Godsinger who arrived before Salim – but no one sang from the dom-al’Ahm tower that evening.’
Tarita’s eyes glinted with interest. ‘Describe him.’
Waqar’s mystic-gnosis aided memory and he quickly pictured the moment: ‘Brown robes. I couldn’t see a face.’
Tarita peered towards the dom-al’Ahm. ‘Let’s look inside.’
‘But you’re a woman,’ he protested. Men and women never used the same shrines.
She ignored him, but at least she slipped off her sandals before going in. ‘Look,’ she said, pointing to a brown robe lying against a wall, ‘that must have been his.’ She picked it up and buried her face in it, then passed it to Waqar. ‘What do you get?’
Tentatively he sniffed, using nose and gnosis. ‘It’s his: Ironhelm. But the trace is fading; it wasn’t a possession he had long or treasured.’
She looked dispirited – then Waqar had an inspiration and took her to the door where Beak had appeared briefly, then vanished. ‘He killed two guards, then entered the zenana,’ he told Tarita. ‘He must have thought Ironhelm and Heartface could easily deal with Salim and me. Correctly,’ he admitted ruefully.
Tarita perked up, though. ‘This is a public place – it’s possible they didn’t return here to erase their traces . . .’ She cast about, her eyes turning amber – animagery-gnosis, Waqar guessed. ‘What we need is . . . Yes!’ A grey-green gecko emerged from a crack in the stonework and crawled into Tarita’s hand. ‘These fellows are able to remember things for a little while,’ she told him.
She reached out and seized Waqar’s hand, cradling the gecko in her other, bathing it in soft golden light. Waqar’s sight blurred and he was swept into a vision of what she was drawing from the gecko’s memories: a warped image of a masked face, an instant before light blazed and the gecko fled for the cracks in the stone.
Then the image withered and he opened his eyes. Tarita was cradling the shrivelled remains of the gecko. ‘Such spells are too much for them,’ she whispered regretfully. ‘Did you see it?’
He was still reeling, and aware that she’d shown daunting skill for one so young. ‘I saw Beak,’ he told her, ‘and below the mask, his beard was braided – that’s a Gatti custom. I doubt many of Gatioch blood were in the Hadishah.’
‘Perhaps not. But it could also be a disguise. My master might be able to trace such a one though. Will you meet him? Tomorrow or the next day, perhaps?’
He hesitated, then nodded. ‘How can I contact you again?’
She looked at him carefully, as if weighing him up, then bent and pulled a tiny copper ring from one of her little toes. It was badly worn and utterly worthless. ‘I’ve had this since I was twelve and never before taken it off. Use this and you’ll reach me from almost anywhere in Kesh.’
Then she folded over into the shuffling creature no one ever noticed and scurried from sight, leaving him alone in the empty palace. He was about to call out when Tamir’s mental voice filled his head.
He forgot Tarita, conjured light to show his way and ran.
*
Waqar found Lukadin waiting at the doors to let him in. ‘Thank Ahm, you’re here,’ his friend exclaimed. ‘She’s been calling for you.’
They hurried to Sakita’s room, where he found Fatima hunched over his mother, holding her hand and mopping her brow. Tamir was watching from the window, biting his nails; Baneet stood beside the door like a statue. Sakita looked worse than ever: one side of her face was lifeless and drooping, her left arm twisted up like a claw. He fell to her side, gripping her shoulder. ‘Mother?’
She didn’t react, but she was still breathing.
He almost broke down as he pulled out the latest vial of elixir and tipped it down her throat, scared he was just pouring more poison into her
venom-stricken body. The fang wounds on her calf wept continually. She smelled of sweat and piss and decay.
‘Shh— Son?’ she slurred. She looked like a corpse, but her eyes were desperately trying to focus.
‘Mother—’ He grabbed her hand.
‘Th . . . p’shun . . . no work,’ she muttered. ‘Voish . . . Eee . . . ting me . . . up.’
What’s she saying? ‘Hush, don’t try to talk.’ He clasped her hand and forced a mental link.
She drew heavily on the link.
She wasn’t sure she could trust me, Waqar realised, mortified.
She looked at him fiercely, her mind trying to spill words into his as her wards flared at the edge of their link, protecting them. Beyond, he sensed something immense, like a wall of eyes and mouths and ears, an amorphous blob of faces a thousand times his size; and he quailed before it.
Is that Abraxas?
Then the sea of faces outside her shields struck and he felt it engulf her as she cast him from the link. In his mind’s eye he was falling as a wave of bloody flesh crushed his mother, mouths latching on and tearing her apart . . .
Suddenly he was back in the room, holding her hand, as Fatima tried to pour healing energy into her and Tamir shouted for help. Ormutz thundered in, another healer and several nurses hurtling along in his wake.
He tried to re-open the link, crying,
*
Waqar sat alone beneath the Elephant Fountain, hoping Tarita would reappear. It was after midnight, the air still warm and dusty, and he was just another shadow on a moonlight-streaked night.
‘I wasn’t sure’, she’d said – of him. She hadn’t trusted her own son.
Because I stayed with Rashid . . .
But she’d tried to tell him everything in the end. Then something – ‘Abraxas’, maybe? – stopped her. His mind kept trying to unpick her final words: ‘You . . . Jehana . . . unique—’ But how are Jehana and I unique?
And how does this relate to Salim’s murder? Why did the masked ones spare me? Why did they only poison Mother when they slaughtered Salim and all his household? And why finish her off now?
The night gave him no answers, and neither did the dawn.
*
Two days later, Waqar, in the second rank of princes, stood on the balcony overlooking the giant square where the Convocation had met, where Salim had made his final public speech. Today it seethed with men and women clothed in white, their faces ash-smeared, wailing and screaming for Ahm to send justice.
In front of him, Attam and Xoredh puffed out their chests, barely able to restrain themselves from joining in the chants. ‘DEATH TO RONDELMAR!’ rolled across the square, waves of sound beating at the walls of the city. ‘SHIHAD! DEATH TO YUROS! SHIHAD!’
Rashid Mubarak, the Sardazam, presided, looking relaxed and masterful, as if this great victory for the Shihadi faction was everything he wanted. Red scarves had washed the square scarlet; the Ja’arathi blue had vanished. The city had been seething since Salim died, waiting for this chance to vent all its grief and rage.
The real assassins must be laughing their heads off, Waqar brooded.
This was only the beginning of a momentous week. Tomorrow the Convocation would begin the search for a new sultan. The Ayatu-Marja would be nominally in charge, but it was the Sardazam who set the agenda. Already it was clear that only the most suicidal of the emirs would stand against Rashid if he wanted the title.
Waqar had been denied even the comfort of a memorial for his mother. Rashid had permitted emissaries of the Ordo Costruo to collect her body and take it by windship to their cemetery in Hebusalim. They’d claimed no one had told them that Sakita was unwell, so someone was lying, but Waqar was scared to ask who. Either way, his mother’s body was borne away on the winds and he felt utterly empty.
The next morning, as the Convocation began, a note was left for him, in a sealed envelope. It gave directions to a meeting place in the city, later that day. With no desire to watch the Convocation unfold, he took Tamir and Fatima – they were best able to blend into a marketplace – and headed for the rendezvous.
*
‘I could blast your face off in half a second,’ Waqar warned the man in the plain dun clothes and checked headscarf, who’d introduced himself as Qasr, Keshi for hawk. Qasr didn’t look at all perturbed by this threat. He had a mild, plump face and a shaven scalp. He spoke Keshi well, with a Yurosi flavour. ‘You’re in no danger from me, Prince Waqar.’
Tarita had instructed Waqar to stop at the third fruit vendors’ stall on the eastern edge of the Mahdi-al’Edher Souk, south of the river, and pick up an orange during the chiming of the fourth bell. He’d worn plain clothes Tamir had found; they were unpleasantly dirty but they’d worked; no one looked twice as he left by a back gate among a gaggle of servants, tailed by his two friends. He’d been nervously glancing about as he made his way through the crowds, wondering if that man in brown was following him, or that woman in the bekira-shroud . . . He got lost for a time in backstreets piled with refuse and stinking of urine; this was a side to the city he’d barely known existed. Crippled beggars and prematurely aged faces stared as he passed; a badly beaten youth lying against a wall groaned for help while surly house-guards brandished their cudgels and berated him. Desperate-looking vendors were selling the most pitiful of wares: precarious lives barely clinging on, fading, failing. The stench left him feeling polluted. He wondered how anyone could stand it.
But he saw smiles and laughter too: madcap children racing through the squares after balls or each other; wizened women chattering, men playing games on blankets in the shade. Dust-caked labourers digging ditches were singing cheerily; a tall girl with a platter of sweetcakes balanced on her head swayed through the press, graceful as a gazelle. The chatter and hum of bargaining, news and gossip was everywhere.
Somehow he’d regained his bearings and reached the appointed stall in time. ‘Qasr’ introduced himself and now Waqar, unsure if Tamir and Fatima had kept up, had to decide whether to trust the man.
‘This way, Prince Waqar,’ Qasr said, indicating an unmarked door in a grubby wall. ‘If you please? I swear, you are in no danger here.’
This is a waste of time if I don’t take a few risks, Waqar decided. I’ll trust Tamir and Fatima to find me. He followed Qasr up some stairs to a sparsely furnished apartment. A young man with a mincing gait brought tea as they settled into chairs and studied each other.
Qasr looked considerably older than Waqar, and his eyes held a lively intelligence. ‘So, I represent Javon, but I’m not Javonesi. I’m from Estellayne, in the west of Yuros – I was a mercenary in the Third Crusade and when my legion changed sides during the Javonesi conflict, we were permitted to settle.’
Waqar knew things were complex in Javon, and that sounded plausible to him. ‘Wasn’t there a Javonesi princess Salim was betrothed to but never actually married?’ he asked.
‘Exactly: the engagement gave him some influence in Javon, and provided some reciprocal benefits. His death changes everything. Tarita and I were here to monitor the Convocation, but Salim
’s assassination altered our mission. We wish to know who killed Salim – we need to assess the danger to Javon.’
This aligned with what Tarita had said, but he asked, ‘How can a Yurosi function as a spy in the East?’
Qasr said, ‘I’m what we Yurosi call a “spymaster”. The noble houses in Yuros and Ahmedhassa employ people like us. It’s my duty to maintain a network of informants. Most of my sources do little more than pass on a bit of knowledge in return for coin while going about their normal lives, unaware even of where that information goes. Their “handlers” – the collectors of that information – have handlers themselves, in a pyramid that leads to people like me, so perhaps a few hundred people are involved in the whole of the known world: a small, dangerous universe.’
‘So my Uncle Rashid has a spymaster?’
‘Of course – but that’s far too big a morsel for this little chat. Let’s stay focused: who are these masked magi and why did they kill Salim? Why did they spare you? Where and when will they strike again? To know that, we have to understand who they are and what they want.’
Tarita surely had already told her master about the man with Gatti braids, so instead he revealed what he’d learned about the strange gnostic trace he’d found. He didn’t mention Abraxas – he could do that later, if Qasr proved trustworthy. But he did show him the sketches of the masks Rashid had given him.
‘Beak, Ironhelm and Heartface – who was a woman.’ Waqar looked up. ‘Do you know of Alyssa Dulayne?’
Qasr leaned forward. ‘Of course.’
‘Do you know where she is?’
‘I’ve not known for some time. Do you think it was her?’
‘I felt like “Heartface” knew me personally – Alyssa’s the only Rondian woman I’ve ever met.’
‘But if the masked woman wasn’t Rondian?’
‘Then she could be anyone. But Heartface had the right stature.’
‘Alyssa Dulayne was crippled by the Merozains, left disfigured, broken,’ Qasr replied. ‘I have this on good authority. Did you know that?’
