Empress of the Fall

by David Hair

  Nock. Draw. Aim. Release.

  Most of the time his brain was focused on the routines, which was better than remembering all he’d lost: he could sink into a void and forget everything for a while.

  Nock. Draw. Aim. Release.

  They were returning from another volley when another man joined the instructor and Latif felt his throat catch, because this was someone he knew: Selmir had led the Hadishah at Riverdown during the Third Crusade, where he’d been outmanoeuvred by better-trained, stronger Rondian magi. Latif had been impersonating Salim then, while the real Salim took the main army north, and he’d had a run-in with Selmir. Today he was richly attired, the hilt of his scimitar gleaming gold, so clearly that had been just a minor setback in his career.

  ‘Kamangiri, prepare!’ the instructor shouted, while Selmir wandered behind the ranks. He chose to stand behind Latif.

  ‘Now!’

  Nock. Draw. Aim. Release.

  Latif struck the target, nice and central – a good effort considering he was dreading recognition. Move on, please, he prayed.

  ‘Wait!’ Selmir’s smooth voice cut across the training field, and the archers paused.

  Latif’s belly churned: Has he recognised me?

  ‘How many of these men are slaves?’ Selmir enquired.

  ‘All of them, Hazarapati,’ the instructor replied.

  Hazarapati? So he commands a hazarabam – that’s, what, a thousand men. Latif remembered Salim’s military briefings. But our unit of forty elephants has also been designated a hazarabam . . . meaning Selmir is our new commanding officer.

  ‘They’re all Lakh or Keshi,’ the instructor said. ‘Good Amteh men. If we freed them, they’d stay.’

  Selmir made an amused noise. ‘Is that right, slave?’ He paused, then said, ‘Well?’

  Latif realised Selmir was talking to him. Head down, mind blank, he said, ‘Ai, Hazarapati.’ He kept his focus on the target as the brush of the man’s mind touched his. The queasy sensation passed quickly, though. ‘They do seem single-minded enough,’ Selmir commented as he withdrew, ‘but then, I always found archery practise hypnotic myself.’

  Latif bit his lip, wary of a sudden strike, like a mouse passing the lair of a cobra, but the hazarapati paid him no further attention and moved on down the line as the archers resumed shooting.

  That afternoon Selmir carried out a full inspection of the unit, all forty elephants with their crew of three armoured and armed. The magi captains all appeared to know Selmir personally, and departed with him afterwards for a briefing.

  The following morning Ashmak announced, ‘We’re moving into the countryside, away from the city.’ The rest of the day was spent dismantling their camp and loading carts, ready to be hooked up behind the elephants the next morning. That night, most of the men gathered to discuss the move, but Latif didn’t care for company; instead, he spent the time practising the mental exercises to kept magi out of one’s thoughts and thinking of escape. But dawn found him still there.

  The hazarabam rode out, watched by thousands of curious citizens. As they wound their way into the desert, Latif thought, So, my personal Shihad has begun.

  Lokistan, Ahmedhassa

  Akhira (Junesse) 935

  The trading-dhou floated at an altitude of nine hundred feet, affording Waqar Mubarak a view that left him and his friends dumbfounded and staring open-mouthed. Rashid’s mission was to take a dozen windships south into Lokistan; four days out of Sagostabad and fighting vicious cross-winds, they’d traversed the mountains, all the while fearing for life and limb. But now here they were, flying over a valley where the forest that had once filled it had been replaced by acres of timber.

  ‘Ahm on High,’ Lukadin repeated, ‘there are hundreds of windships here!’

  ‘Not all have keels or sails,’ Tamir pointed out.

  ‘Not yet,’ Baneet grunted, ‘but look, over there.’ He pointed to acres of sailcloth laid out in the sun. It looked like the cloth was being dyed by dozens of tiny figures.

  ‘Is the whole of Lokistan here?’ Fatima wondered. ‘Look at all the people—’

  ‘Several tribes, at least,’ put in a voice of oil and syrup, and Saarif Ibram glided to Waqar’s side, silencing the group. There was something about the plump merchant-mage that suggested some vast jest that only he understood, but he was the sultan’s liaison. ‘We’ve been working here for more than a decade. One of those warbirds takes three years to complete, did you know?’

  ‘How can we fund this?’ Waqar wondered aloud.

  ‘Oh, these people have next to nothing except their timber, and now they don’t even have that,’ Saarif chuckled. ‘A Keshi riyal is worth hundreds of their dinar. I can feed these animals for a pittance.’

  ‘Where were these fleets during the Third Crusade?’ Fatima asked.

  ‘Right here, although only half as many, with too few keels and barely any crew. It was too soon to use them: the Rondians would have destroyed us. But now the Lokistani and Ingashir are flocking to us – they hate the Lakh with a passion beyond even ours. They’re like rabid dogs, aching to bite again.’

  ‘Uncle says you’re behind schedule,’ Waqar said.

  ‘Indeed. We’ve never got enough workers – but the real issue has been the pilots. We have crews, and we have many times the archers we need, but each vessel needs an Air-mage. Only a third of all magi have Air-affinity, which makes our main challenge getting airborne.’

  ‘That’s a pretty big issue for a windfleet,’ Tamir commented.

  Saarif laughed. ‘We have but four dozen Air-magi here and none are more than quarter-blood, but we’ve more than three hundred ships, so it is indeed a problem. But it is not as bad as you think, Prince Waqar. The breeding-houses grew between the Second and Third Crusades and many young magi are even now completing their training. The real breakthrough is this.’ He produced a large glass-like gem from a pocket of his flowing robes. ‘These were an Ordo Costruo innovation: they can be tuned to convert raw energy to a specific type of the gnosis – not very efficient, maybe, but it works well enough that with one of these, any mage can power a windship’s keel.’

  He offered the gem to Waqar, who studied it. ‘Impressive,’ he admitted.

  ‘Such a gem burns through the gnosis at many times the natural rate, but it will enable many more vessels to fly than without,’ he explained. ‘We’re bringing in hundreds of these gems, as well as more than five hundred low-blood magi – children really, fresh from the breeding-houses and with minimal training – but they’ll have the power to get every windship here airborne.’

  Dear Ahm, Waqar thought, this is real. This war is really going to happen.

  ‘When will the Shihad begin?’ asked Lukadin, much the most warlike of them.

  ‘When our Glorious Sultan commands,’ Saarif replied.

  Irritating prick, Waqar thought. ‘I’m your prince, and I also wish to know!’

  ‘Your uncle is the sultan,’ Saarif laughed, ‘and he commands me to be silent.’

  ‘He’s in Sagostabad—!’

  ‘He is everywhere,’ Saarif replied evasively – even when the harbadab demanded that he should obey a prince. ‘All will be revealed when Rashid wills it, no sooner.’

  Waqar turned away to mask the unsettling effect the merchant-mage had on him. They were dropping into a vast open space near the centre of the valley where the forest had been erased as if by giants with shovels. Their fleet of twelve windships, heavy with cargo, followed them in, creaking timbers filling the air as they came to rest on their landing stanchions. It was a powerful feeling, to fly as the Rondians flew, and despite his irritation with Saarif, Waqar hadn’t lost his wonder at the sensation.

  Then the hot, dusty, smoky fug of the giant camp filled their lungs and brought them very quickly back to earth. Waqar had thought the mobs on the streets of Sagostabad ragged and filthy, but the Lokistani were something altogether different: the women, wearing full Amteh dress despite the punishing heat, were
encrusted in dirt, their bekira-shrouds just cloth and dust. The bronze-skinned children were mostly naked. The men were bigger than typical Keshi, with hatchet noses, intimidating eyes and bushy beards, but when Waqar disembarked they fell to their knees in waves, as if he were the Prophet Himself returning at the End of Days.

  ‘They believe you have come to lead them to victory,’ Saarif murmured.

  After the stony-faced chieftains had come forth to give homage, the cargo was finally revealed. Apart from the gems, the fleet carried enough gnostically crafted keels, already fully charged with Air-gnosis, to lift a third of the craft here into the air.

  ‘You are to remain here and supervise the assembly of the war-fleet. The supply fleet will return thrice more,’ Saarif told Waqar. ‘By the end of Junesse, Sultan Rashid wants the entire fleet assembled and ready to fly.’

  Tamir was running his eyes down the sheet of paper Saarif had given him: ‘Three hundred transporter-craft, light and heavy, a combined capacity of nearly forty thousand men – the holds are huge, but there’s no weight wasted on defence or weapons. With this fleet, we could drop an army anywhere we wanted—’

  ‘You still have to feed them,’ Baneet said dourly.

  ‘Ai, Baneet would need a whole transporter of cattle to feed just him,’ Fatima laughed.

  ‘A clever general would fly to where food awaits.’ Saarif’s eyes were twinkling.

  So he does know where the fleet is to be sent.

  ‘The Rondians brought two hundred thousand men to Ahmedhassa in the last Crusade,’ Lukadin enthused. ‘A single sailing of this fleet could transport a fifth of that. How many fleets are being built?’ he asked Saarif.

  ‘Another six,’ Saarif replied. ‘We could put a quarter of a million men at an enemy’s gates.’

  That the Shihad would go to Lakh was now widely assumed, though Waqar still wondered about Javon, which led him to think about the intriguing Tarita. But seeing this fleet brought home to him that anywhere in Ahmedhassa was a potential target. Perhaps it was destiny that Kesh unite Ahmedhassa as the ultimate deterrent to invasion from the west. Perhaps this holy war really was blessed . . .

  They had a day to settle in, then their work began in earnest. Waqar busied himself coming to grips with their role, which was mostly organisational, to ensure that his workforce saw a leader in him. He assembled the painfully young and fresh-faced magi and read them a letter from his uncle, praising their work and promising glory to come. Then he described the function of the gnosis-converting gems before distributing them.

  He also ratified formal appointments, on Saarif’s recommendations, and inspected each vessel. Most were crudely built; the niceties like carved and polished timbers, pretty bowsprits and the like were of less import than a craft that could fly. The building crews descended on the new keels and as the first craft rose into the air, so did loud cheers, followed by mass prayers and celebrations as a tide of exhilaration energised the camp. The Lokistani workers, caught up in the fervour, laboured even longer and harder as days became weeks.

  Waqar buried his grief in the task at hand. He tried to contact his sister, but the mountains were blocking his calls; Jehana had been unreachable in Sagostabad before he left too, and that was troubling – but he had little room for brooding.

  Once Saarif Ibram flew the first fifty craft away, Waqar felt they could speak more freely. ‘Rashid must have every Air-mage and sylvan-mage in Ahmedhassa working on those keels,’ he observed, as his friends shared a late-night sharbat.

  ‘I expect he has,’ Tamir commented, ‘since the last Moontide.’

  ‘Shuban-Ahm,’ Waqar breathed, ‘you’re right – of course he’s been building this fleet instead of viaducts and aqueducts, or restoring farms and all the other things he told Salim he was doing. People are starving throughout Ahmedhassa for this fleet.’

  Such thoughts made these birds of war much less beautiful.

  ‘Sacrifices must be made for the glory of Ahm,’ Lukadin argued.

  ‘Uncle lied to Salim,’ Waqar breathed. ‘He must have been secretly abetting the Shihadis all along.’

  ‘There is no glory in a shameful peace,’ Lukadin replied, quoting the Kalistham.

  ‘Tell that to the dead,’ Fatima scoffed.

  When they were all gone to their separate tents, Waqar pulled out a relay-stave, left with him so that he could contact Sagostabad in emergency, but his mind was on Jehana, and the mysterious Tarita and her Javonesi friends. After much consideration, he took up the stave and sent out a call, augmented sufficiently to clear the mountains.

  *

  Hebusalim, Dhassa

  Tarita left Sagostabad in early Akhira and rode the night skies for three days. The two-hundred-mile journey, several weeks’ travel by road, was a relatively easy flight for a wind-pilot, even if the winds were contrary. She spent the night in the wilds, hiding her craft and setting birds to watch for intruders, then sleeping in the hull. Wind-travel was still a novel thing in Dhassa and she didn’t want to draw attention – there were still many who thought magi were afreet, despite the role of Keshi magi in defeating the last Crusade.

  Tarita might be young, and her education incomplete, but growing up in the servant halls of the royal palaces in Javon had given her plenty of experience in how the world worked. She’d seen ruthless people exploit status and power without conscience, and she was certain the masked assassins would be traced back to that sort of person: an emir; a sultan, a mage . . . Somehow, she had to pull their masks away.

  It was her own safety that was uppermost in her mind, though, as she guided her craft to a certain rooftop in the shadow of the Domus Costruo, the headquarters of the Ordo Costruo, the Builder-magi, on the outskirts of Hebusalim. The city was a dark blur under a new moon, with the curved marble dome of the huge Bekira Dom-al’Ahm shining serene as a matriarch over the high walls and close-packed streets. Unlike Sagostabad, the city had been under constant repair since the Moontide and was now restored to its full glory.

  The skiff crunched down and servants appeared to help lash down the sails and take charge of her small pile of baggage while she wearily climbed to the ground.

  ‘Tarita Alhani,’ a cool voice called and a willowy figure emerged from the shadows, moonlight gleaming on pale curling tresses, illuminating a dark, captivating face: Odessa D’Ark of the Ordo Costruo.

  ‘Sal’Ahm,’ Tarita replied, bowing respectfully. ‘Capolio contacted you, Magister?’

  ‘Of course – I hardly greet all new arrivals,’ the Ordo Costruo’s senior female mage replied dryly. ‘He asked that you be permitted to examine the Ordo Costruo breeding records: you think our records might identify a Gatti-born mage involved in the death of Sultan Salim. We’ll assist you, of course – but I expect a full report of your findings.’

  Tarita bowed respectfully. ‘Is it expected to be a big task?’

  Odessa snorted. ‘Girl, the records are incomplete, and encrypted.’ When Tarita groaned, she added, ‘However, I have a young scholar who loves puzzles.’

  Tarita was given a room and access to the students’ dining hall and introduced to a plump, soft young woman with a pale, dogged face. Gianna was twenty-six, and had no apparent ambition to use her gnosis for anything but research. Tarita couldn’t imagine a life so dull, but she found Gianna’s enthusiasm for scholarship likeable.

  The Ordo Costruo had three departments: the Arcanum educated young magi; the Collegiate was a research library, devoted primarily to the gnosis, but also to the history of Urte, and the Magisterium housed the administration and builders: those who created the mighty aqueducts, bridges and buildings the order was famous for.

  ‘The recovered breeding-house records fall under our jurisdiction in the Collegiate,’ Gianna told Tarita. ‘After we escaped the Hadishah, we managed to acquire a lot of the records.’

  Tarita heard the ‘we’ and took the girl’s hand sympathetically. ‘You were a prisoner? I’m so sorry.’ Dear Ahm, she can’t have been more t
han eighteen when they captured her . . .

  ‘I had two children, but of course I’ve never met them.’ Gianna replied, gently but firmly removing her hand. ‘Don’t touch me again.’

  Tarita flinched. At least she didn’t call me ‘Noorie’ or ‘mudskin’. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I doubt it was your fault,’ Gianna said tersely, then she sighed. ‘No, I’m sorry – it’s still . . . you know, fresh.’ The scholar didn’t ask about Tarita’s origins – in fact, she actively appeared not to want to know – and instead launched into a diatribe about the breeding-house records. ‘They’re intact, but they’re coded. We’ve not yet deciphered them, but we’ve been meaning to: you’ve given us an excuse.’

  Their first week was spent just organising and cataloguing, and the second week was spent decoding the shorthand of the Hadishah record-keepers, who’d decided to save parchment by inventing hieroglyphs to denote who was mated with whom and when, and the outcome. They varied as new staff replaced old and implemented their own preferences, until even Gianna was left scratching her head.

  Every evening, Tarita reported to Capolio via a narrow-focus relay-stave call, complained of the lack of progress and was persuaded into persisting. She also tried to contact Waqar Mubarak, but got no response. After she’d burned out all six of her staves, she requested more from Odessa, who’d been checking on her from time to time to monitor progress. Between days spent scribbling and nights alone, Tarita felt like she was back in the Merozain monastery where she’d learned to use the gnosis.

  It wasn’t until her third week in Hebusalim, the penultimate week of Junesse, that Gianna finally identified a symbol that she was certain meant that the breeder, male or female, had Gatti blood, after they matched a ‘ڇ’ sign, very occasionally dotted through the shorthand, to a name they knew to be Gatti: someone called Ptofaz, which narrowed their search considerably.

  By the end of that week, with Darkmoon approaching, they had three men who might be of the right age to be the man Tarita sought. There were many breeding-houses, and not all had shared information, but Tarita was feeling hopeful as she passed those names on to Capolio.