Empress of the Fall

by David Hair

  ‘No!’ Alyssa had been beautifully, tall and willowy: vanity personified. ‘The Merozains did that to her? What happened to peace and love?’

  ‘The wounds were sustained in combat, I understand,’ Qasr replied. ‘I’ve heard the best healers couldn’t cure her and she’s now a deformed hunchback, not seen publicly since. Interesting, though; I’ll make enquiries. I’m already asking about a Hadishah with Gatti braids – I don’t hold out great hope of finding him, but whatever we learn, I’ll pass on. And thank you for your intriguing information about the gnostic auras.’

  He stood, and Waqar followed suit. He sensed no threat. ‘Some advice, if you’re to dip your toes in my world, Prince Waqar,’ Qasr said. ‘Be very careful what questions you ask, and whether you truly want to know the answers to them.’

  The more Waqar thought on those words, the more ominous they sounded.

  *

  The new Convocation went as predicted: everyone was happy to blame the Rondians for Salim’s death, especially Ali Beyrami’s Shihadi fanatics. Young men clamoured for a new Shihad, attacking any who disagreed in bloody street clashes. Meanwhile, the emirs united to eulogise the man who stood above them all, and unanimously elected Rashid Mubarak as their new sultan. He would be Kesh’s first mage-born supreme leader, and if anyone was disquieted to be setting one of Shaitan’s Afreet as their overlord, no one had the courage to say so in public.

  Attam and Xoredh were ahead of Waqar in every ritual and ceremony and they never failed to emphasise it. Waqar’s days were filled with such events and his friends began to feel like strangers, his old life a fond memory. The masked assassins were pushed from his thoughts and even his mother’s loss receded to a dull ache.

  *

  ‘I have a task for you, Nephew,’ Rashid said, drawing him away from the others.

  ‘I am yours to command, Uncle, as ever.’

  ‘Excellent. I need you to fly south. There are great events afoot and all of my kin must play a part. Are you aware that since the First Crusade, we in the East have been building windships? We kept them secret until the last Crusade, and we have built many more since.’

  This didn’t come as a huge surprise. Rashid went on, ‘It might surprise you to learn that I’ve been building far more than even Sultan Salim knew: right now we have almost ten thousand windships under construction.’

  Waqar blinked. ‘Ten thousand?’ He wouldn’t have thought there were enough trees in Ahmedhassa for so many.

  Rashid smiled at his shock. ‘We have created ship-building sites in the wildernesses, wherever there is timber, and we have been dealing with Yurosi traders – on the black market, everything is for sale. When the Shihad is launched, we will rule the air.’

  Waqar felt his jaw drop. With such massive windship resources, everything changed. Yuros might still be out of reach, for the Ordo Costruo controlled the skies over the Leviathan Bridge, but suddenly anywhere in Ahmedhassa was in reach . . .

  ‘Then it’s really war?’

  ‘Shihad has been ordained. It’s my duty to execute it.’

  Something in Rashid’s poise reminded Waqar of a hooded cobra, ready to strike. ‘Is it Javon? Or Lakh?’

  ‘In truth, you’ll have to wait and see. I’m sending you to Lokistan, to the largest of our ship-building bases. You’re to take command of that fleet and ensure it’s ready to fly by the end of Akhira.’

  ‘So soon?’ Waqar was astounded. ‘That’s only six or seven weeks away—’

  ‘Soon by your reckoning,’ Rashid replied, ‘but some of us have been waiting a lifetime for this moment, and preparing for almost as long. My commander there is Saarif Ibram – be guided by him.’

  The name rang bells: ‘Saarif Ibram? Isn’t he just a merchant?’

  ‘He’s a man of many talents.’ Rashid stood. ‘You may take your friends with you, as protectors and advisors. Ensure they too learn from the experience.’

  Waqar bowed, then hesitated. ‘Must we go to war?’

  Rashid’s face turned flinty, but he didn’t censure him. ‘Waqar, I pardon your questioning, for I know you grieve for your mother, my sister. I too grieve. But look around you: Kesh is in ruins. If we do nothing, our homeland will disintegrate into chaos.’

  ‘But war is what has done this, Uncle!’

  ‘Ai, war has ruined us – but war now unites us. That is the energy it brings. The emirs will stand together – provided I give them someone to conquer. To alleviate the suffering of generations to come, our generation must take the hard choices.’

  Next morning, Waqar flew south, those words ringing in his ears.

  22

  The Archer’s Test

  Knowledge and Power

  So this skinny prick says, ‘Knowledge is the only true power.’ I’d had a few, so I bloodied his pointy nose. Next day I had to skip the bloody district: turns out he was the earl’s son. Should’a known, I guess!

  JERZI SNYTT, VERELONI CRIMINAL, 627

  Sagostabad, Kesh, Ahmedhassa

  Jumada (Maicin) 935

  Latif, once a sultan’s impersonator, flexed his bleeding fingers and hefted another load of bricks still hot from the kiln. He was beyond exhaustion, utterly wrapped up in the mind-numbing, bone-deep ache of labour. All round him was haze and dust and half-naked men with their heads wrapped in filthy scarves, as his was, so they could breath. They were sun-blackened, skin-and-bone wraiths drifting through the smoke, in one of row upon row of building sites, each merging with the next like a giant quarry. His eyes were filled with grit and dried clay clogged his hair. His shoulders ached from the yoke he bore.

  Behind him, Sanjeep was guiding Rani as she pulled another load of fresh bricks. It might be only a month since the old mahout had rescued him but it felt like a lifetime: living in the stables, washing as best he could every evening in a bucket and sleeping in bug-infested straw. The only respite came on Jome, holy day; mornings were spent at the dom-al’Ahm, of course, but in the afternoon they could rest.

  The next Jome was days away, but even so, prayer dominated their free time. The Amteh prayed six times a day: at dawn, mid-morning, midday, mid-afternoon, dusk and late evening. Not all the labourers were devout, but all appreciated the break. This morning a new campaign of Shihadi hectoring had begun, the Amteh clergy now reminding their flock that the Lakh were godless infidels. This worried Sanjeep and his fellow displaced Lakh: the Nishander district already suffered enough rampages by Keshi youths without adding extra provocation.

  And Rashid Mubarak, Emir of Halli’kut, was now Sultan of all Kesh.

  That was inevitable, Latif reflected. The change in ruler didn’t make him at all inclined to return to the palace and identify himself. If Rashid had been behind the murders, then he’d have Latif silenced, and even if he hadn’t, who needed the impersonator of a dead sultan? And what if the masked magi heard that he’d survived?

  No, better I forget that life as if it never was.

  ‘Latif,’ Sanjeep called, tossing a water-bottle, ‘drink – you look done in.’

  The sheer weariness of back-breaking labour was exacerbated by not enough food or water. Every day someone died, from collapsed walls or other accidents, or sheer exhaustion. Latif could feel the spectral hand of death reaching out for him, but he was too numb to care. He completed another load, then the wail of the Godsingers rose from a distant tower, calling the men of the Prophet to worship, and he sagged in relief. ‘Ahm be praised!’

  ‘Indeed, my friend,’ the old Lakh mahout said, slapping his shoulders.

  They joined the lines filing into the dom-al’Ahm and knelt in ranks on the takiya beneath the gaze of a stern Godspeaker and his retinue of Scriptualists. This was familiar territory for Latif, who’d thought to be a Scriptualist before being plucked from his scribe’s family and placed in Salim’s retinue as a nine-year-old. He feared discovery still, despite his dishevelled appearance, so he kept his head low.

  ‘The Blessings of the Prophet be upon you all,’ the God
speaker called, before rattling through the ritual prayers of the day in perfunctory style. Latif used the time to give his tortured body some respite. Then came the lesson. ‘The Prophet Aluq-Ahmed was many things, brethren,’ the Godspeaker started, ‘a holy man, a ruler, a scholar, a seer. With the holy hand of Ahm upon Him, He united Kesh in the name of the one true God. The old idols and blasphemies were expunged, burned away like chaff. He then confronted the defining question of His time: should He be content that His people were saved, though idolatry and evil thrived beyond the borders of His lands? Should He be callous to the plight of those born in heathen lands, doomed to die having never known the Word of Ahm? Would it be right to shed blood in bringing the Word to the Lost? These questions He put to all the wise men of Kesh, in the first Convocation of the Faith: asking, “Can a war ever be holy?”

  ‘The answer they reached was that a war commanded by Ahm and waged in His name is indeed holy: it is wrong to allow evil to thrive beyond one’s borders, for that evil will grow and threaten the physical and spiritual wellbeing of your own people. It is wrong to let an ignorant man condemn himself to Shaitan’s Pit when he can be redeemed. If first he must be disarmed, then disarm him: just as a wild horse must be tamed before it is ridden, so must the barbarian be tamed before he can be taught.

  ‘The new Kesh, united under Sultan Rashid Mubarak I, has pledged Shihad against all heathen nations, in perpetuity. We know who our enemies are: they are the enemies of Ahm. Whether they are worshippers of devils or false gods, they are the enemies of the Faith. Whether they dwell in the south of Lakh or in godless Gatti and Mirobez or far-flung Javon and Yuros, they are our enemies. We are a people at war!’

  Perpetual untargeted Shihad . . . Latif shivered. A licence for Rashid’s favoured generals to take all they want and more, for ever.

  But no one here saw it like that; the Godspeaker had paused as every man cheered and shook his fists in the air, proclaiming ‘Death to the Yurosi!’ with blithe, careless righteousness.

  It seemed wise to do the same.

  No wonder Salim failed to quell this message. It’s so simple: we tried to reason, but the Shihadi just rabble-roused. But if you promise blood you must deliver . . .

  After the lesson, red scarves were handed out and Latif took one, because they all did. It would keep the dust from his mouth.

  *

  Somehow, Latif endured, the mindless routine of labour, eating, praying and sleeping allowing him to forget his old life. It saved him from embracing the hand of death, as others sometimes did, when the deep, swift Tigrates River flowed through the city and there were a hundred other ways to die readily at hand. He teetered on the edge of despair, then slowly trudged back towards life, losing himself in another impersonation: of someone he could have been, had not Salim’s agents taken him into the royal household all those years ago.

  Then, without warning, everything changed again.

  Sanjeep and Latif returned from mid-morning prayer to find a black-robed man with hawkish features stroking Rani’s trunk. He was clearly a warrior; his scimitar-hilt was in plain sight, a strung bow in a tooled leather sheath hung on his back, beside a quiver of arrows.

  To Latif’s trained eye, he was much more. He wore a gem that was likely a periapt, and there were certain tattoos on his wrists.

  Hadishah.

  ‘This elephant – is it yours?’ the man demanded of Sanjeep.

  ‘Ai, sahib,’ Sanjeep replied anxiously.

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Twenty-four years old, sahib. Female. She cannot breed any more. I have ownership branding for her, sahib,’ Sanjeep added. Among the elephant owners, beast and master had identical brands. ‘I can show you.’

  The Hadishah sniffed indifferently. ‘You are the mahout? How old are you?’

  ‘Fifty-seven, sahib,’ Sanjeep replied.

  ‘And you are Amteh?’

  ‘Ai, sahib! All my life! Ask anyone, they will—’

  ‘Quiet, old man.’ The Hadishah looked Rani up and down. ‘Is she trained for war?’

  ‘No, sahib. She is a working elephant only.’

  ‘But she can be trained,’ the Hadishah insisted.

  Latif guessed where this was going, and so did Sanjeep. ‘If I were there to guide her, sahib,’ Sanjeep said plaintively. Without Rani, he’d have nothing. ‘She needs my hand, otherwise she—’

  ‘Silence,’ the Hadishah snapped, and Sanjeep almost swallowed his tongue.

  The old Lakh fell to his knees. ‘Sahib, Rani is my whole world.’

  The Hadishah gestured brusquely. ‘The elephant is now mine, Lakh. So are you.’

  ‘But sahib, I have contracts with the—’

  ‘I’ll deal with that.’ The Hadishah looked at Latif, his eye running over him from head to foot and back, no recognition in his eyes. ‘Get lost, wretch. I don’t need you.’

  Sanjeep looked at Latif apologetically.

  For Latif, two futures opened up: one of them a short, miserable life choking on brick-dust until it clogged his lungs and killed him. The other possibility was so unlikely as to barely exist . . . but he snatched at it. In war, elephants bore a castle of wicker and hide to protect three crew: the mahout, a spearman and an archer. Latif had seen them many times – and all the impersonators had been trained in the basic skills of war. ‘I can shoot, sahib,’ he told the Hadishah. ‘And I can help with Rani.’

  The Hadishah pulled the bow from his back-sheath. ‘Show me.’

  Latif gulped, but took the weapon and an arrow.

  The Hadishah looked around. ‘See that pillar?’ he said, pointing to a piece of timber some fifty paces away. ‘Hit it.’ He looked Latif in the eye. ‘Miss, and I’ll have you flogged for lying.’

  The nearby workers and the overseer stopped to watch as Latif nocked the arrow and measured the distance. It’d been months since he’d last practised, on an idyllic morning before the Convocation. His wife and son had been watching, and while he could barely recall his wife’s face, his son’s was vivid in his memory, wide-eyed and filled with hero-worship.

  Stay relaxed. Draw, pull, sight and release; let it flow, all one movement . . .

  That was the secret: to not allow yourself time to waver and doubt. The movement came to him easily, the bow sang and the shaft buried itself in the pillar, left and low of where he’d aimed, but still a hit. He stared at the quivering shaft as his future morphed again.

  ‘Very well,’ the Hadishah said. ‘You come too. I am Ashmak. You are both now soldiers of the Shihad and I am your new master.’

  Oh, the irony, Latif thought. Salim, what must you be thinking, watching in Paradise? And Rashid, if you knew, how you would laugh!

  ‘Our possessions are at the stables, Lord,’ Sanjeep said, his voice disbelieving.

  ‘Is there aught of value? No? Then forget them. You will be furnished with uniforms and equipment at my barracks.’ Ashmak clapped his hands. ‘Come!’

  Latif seized Rani’s guide-rope while Sanjeep clambered nimbly up to the howdah. Ashmak peered upwards, then grunted and settled into a walk beside Latif as they left the worksite.

  ‘Where did you learn to shoot?’ he asked, his voice faintly curious.

  ‘I was an archer in the Third Crusade,’ Latif replied, which wasn’t far from the truth. ‘I was at Shaliyah, then Ardijah and Riverdown.’

  ‘Salim’s own army?’ Ashmak grimaced in remembrance. ‘You were fortunate. The late sultan was careful with his men. I was in the north, where Rashid Mubarak burned through soldiers like tinder. What are you called?’

  ‘Latif,’ he replied, deliberately dropping the Lakh pronunciation. He was tired of that lie, and he needed to keep things simple around a Hadishah man.

  ‘Then you’re not Lakh?’ Ashmak stared, and his eyes glowed faintly. Latif realised in alarm that the Hadishah man meant to probe his mind and immediately blanked it, as he’d been taught. Ashmak frowned. ‘Where did you learn to do that?’

  Latif swallowed, but he c
ouldn’t see what else he could have done. The impersonators had been taught how to wall up their minds so that any mage probing them would destroy their sanity before they unlocked Salim’s secrets – but he needed another explanation: ‘There was a Hadishah man attached to my satabam who taught us, in case Rondian magi attacked him through us.’

  ‘Smart thinking,’ Ashmak said grudgingly. ‘So why are you working among the Lakh if you’re Keshi?’

  ‘I’m a mongrel,’ Latif replied. ‘Keshi raised me, but I have Lakh blood also.’

  ‘I don’t care if you’re half-dog,’ Ashmak said, ‘as long as you can shoot. You belong to me now.’

  The Hadishah led them to a compound east of the city and once inside he flicked his finger at Sanjeep, indicating he should climb down. Guardsmen closed in. Their leather breastplates were embossed with jackal heads. Latif stood beside the older man, looking about warily. No one looked very welcoming.

  Ashmak clicked his fingers. ‘Follow,’ he said, turning on his heels, and they hurried after him into a sweltering smithy filled with fires and hammering sounds. Latif had no idea what was happening, but Sanjeep stopped at the door. ‘No, sahib!’

  The soldiers seized them and forced them to their knees. Latif struggled in bewilderment, but he stood no chance in his weakened state. ‘These are runaway Lakh slaves,’ Ashmak announced. ‘I found them, and claim them. Brand them with my sigil, and the elephant too.’

  Branding? Dear Ahm!

  The guards subdued him easily and a red-hot piece of metal was jammed into his skin. He screamed and doubled over, howling on and on, even after a wet compress smelling of herbs was jammed against the wound. He’d pissed himself, though he didn’t realise until minutes after. He couldn’t watch as they did the same to Sanjeep. The old mahout wailed and sobbed before the brand was even applied, the sound redoubling as the metal seared his skin. The cooked meat smell made Latif vomit.

  When he could finally see straight, he saw Ashmak dictating to a slave with a scribing board. ‘Burn their clothes and shave their heads, then equip them. Arrange for a battlefield howdah. Training begins tomorrow morning.’