The Kingdoms of Dust

by Amanda Downum

  “No need for that,” Melantha said, hiding a grin. “Who did you rob?”

  “A lapidary in Yashkis.”

  The upscale market district, and in daylight, no less. Melantha whistled. “Your friend must have wanted badly to impress you.”

  Moth swallowed and glanced at the floor. “Jemal—”

  “He’ll be fine. I’m sure he’s done this before.”

  The girl’s face was flat and still, but the ripple of light along her knife betrayed her nerves. “What do you want?”

  “To give you a warning: Your mistress is in danger. This isn’t the time to be playing tag with the city guard.”

  Moth’s eyes narrowed. “You’re the one who’s been following us.”

  “I’m not the only one. Iskaldur was taken by the Friends. Mulberry Lane is being watched, so tread lightly. Their headquarters is in Golga Court—tread even softer there.”

  “You’re a spy. Why should I believe you?”

  “Your mistress is a spy, too.”

  Pride lifted the girl’s chin. “That’s why I know better.”

  Melantha nearly winced. If Iskaldur was half the stormcrow Corylus made her out to be, Moth would never be safe at her side.

  Do you suppose your company is any safer? No, of course she didn’t.

  “Believe what you like, but be careful. Your mistress is no use to either of us in prison. Here—” She reached into the leather bag slung across her back and pulled out a small well-wrapped bundle. A quick touch told her the glass was still intact. “A present for Iskaldur, when you see her again.”

  Moth took the wrapped bottle with a frown. “What about you?”

  “You might see me again, too.” With Melantha’s wink, a coil of shadow snuffed the candle. The sound of Moth’s cursing followed her as she vanished.

  Dusk settled slowly around the Susturma Serai. A true palace once, its former grandeur lingered in delicately carven arches and intricate tilework, clung to the lintels with flakes of gilt. Its halls still remembered the footsteps of lords and princes and perfumed courtiers, but for the past twenty years it had been home to Iskar’s secret police.

  Distant bells tolled the setting sun, but silence filled the little room where Isyllt, Adam, and Iskar’s spymaster sat. Tea cooled on a table while they watched one another. Sahin’s guards waited outside, having taken Adam’s sword and Isyllt’s blade and kit. They had eyed her ring as well. Better for everyone that they’d chosen not to touch it.

  She knew Sahin the same way she knew much of Kehribar—Kiril’s wealth of notes and records. She’d thought he would be older; the skin around his long black eyes was smooth, mustache untouched by grey, but she’d heard his name for nearly fifteen years.

  “My agents tell me you’ve been in Kehribar for over a decad,” Sahin said. “So I’m lucky to have only one alleged corpse so far.” His eyes glinted when she raised her eyebrows. “I had reports of Symir.”

  Isyllt’s mouth twisted sideways, tugging at scabs. Maybe it was for the best she’d lost her position with the Crown—she was ruined for foreign assignments. “An alleged corpse?”

  “We were told of a disturbance near the Istara Carsisi, and of a foreign witch’s involvement. When we arrived, we found only a bloodstain in an alley and a confusion of footprints.”

  Isyllt spread her hands. Every gesture snagged her glove on a broken nail, sending a thrill of pain up her arm. “As your search revealed, I have no corpses in my pockets.” She kept her movements calm and relaxed when her heart wanted to speed. “I can hardly be the only foreign witch in Kehribar.”

  “No.” Sahin sipped his tea. “What happened to your face?”

  Her smile split her lip again. “I’m no good at haggling.”

  He chuckled. “You’ll forgive me if I find it all too easy to believe you’re involved. Several parties have expressed interest in you already.”

  “What sort of interest?”

  “Some would like you dead. Others would simply see your friend returned to the Çirağan, and you in a lead-lined cell below him.”

  “I only came to Kehribar to find my friend,” she said, voice mild. Adam tensed; could they fight their way through a palace of armed killers? “Having done so, I’m happy to leave. I didn’t come here to cause trouble, Sahin Bey. I’m no longer in the business.”

  He smiled, a more honest expression than she’d yet seen. “I retired once, several years ago. It lasted two months. One does not leave our business so easily.”

  Two soft taps sounded against the door before Isyllt could reply, followed by another two.

  A fine line appeared and smoothed between Sahin’s brows. “Excuse me.”

  She blew a sharp breath through her nose as the door closed behind him. Adam’s knuckles were white on the arms of his chair. A year ago she might have tried their odds against the Friends. Now the thought made her palms sweat.

  A murmur of voices rose from the hall, faded again. Heartbeats thudded by till she lost count. Her mouth was dry, and she drained half the cold tea in her cup. Her arm ached with the effort of making the movement seem relaxed. Even the new weight in her diamond didn’t reassure her as it should.

  Isyllt imagined half an hour or more passed before she heard footsteps in the hall again. The door opened, and lamplight warmed the curve of Sahin’s skull. His face was calm, but his shoulders and jaw were tighter than they had been when he left. His smile was tighter still.

  “It seems that not everyone wants you buried.”

  Another set of footsteps approached—uneven steps, accompanied by the click of a cane. Sahin stepped aside for a hooded man. The light from the hall cast his face in shadow.

  “My lord?” Sahin asked when the man stayed silent. He spoke in Assari, and Isyllt’s skin prickled.

  “Excuse me.” One brown hand rose to throw back his hood. “I was waiting for an explosion.”

  Adam swore under his breath a heartbeat before Isyllt laughed. A name rose to her lips and she swallowed it. “My lord. Imagine meeting you here.”

  She had met Siddir Bashari in Sivahra, where he’d worn the guise of an insouciant nobleman, all silk and oiled curls. He wore plain linen now, and his dark hair was cropped short. He’d grown a beard, but the laughing hazel eyes were the same. An Assari spy shouldn’t be a comforting sight, but her smile made her cheeks ache. On the heels of her relief, a cold weight settled in her stomach. It felt like a snare closing.

  Sahin watched them, sharp-eyed as the falcon that was his namesake. Assar had made incursions northward for centuries, first rebuffed by the Steppes horselords and later driven back by the navies of the Ataskar Caliphate. Subsequent generations had made peace, but kingdoms had long memories. Sahin might yield to an Assari agent, but he would never enjoy it.

  “Lady Iskaldur.” Siddir offered a hand and she rose to take it, relief overpowering her misgivings for the moment. “A mutual friend sent me to find you. Will you come?”

  Her smile sharpened. “I find myself with few options.”

  He bowed, as gracious as if he hadn’t just backed her into a corner. “Thank you.”

  * * *

  “Convenient timing,” she said as they descended the steps of the Susturma Serai into the sticky night. Her kit was a reassuring weight at her hip. “Or did you orchestrate this all?” The scales of relief and distrust shifted every time she glanced at him; they would balance eventually, she supposed. They had to, in their work.

  She snorted in soft disgust; how easily this became her work again.

  Siddir’s eyes widened, all innocence. No grown man should have eyes like that. “We only arrived in port this morning. It’s both our good luck that one of my contacts heard of a northern sorceress being apprehended by the Friends this afternoon.”

  “Very convenient.”

  “Let’s call it fortuitous. And let’s be on our way.” The ferrule of his cane clicked against the stones. “Too much serendipity gives me a rash.”

  Hours later, Isy
llt stood on the quay with Moth and Adam, watching the Marid prepare to sail. The perfume bottle warmed in her hand, blown glass swirled with blue and violet ribbons, delicate as a soap bubble. The woman in black’s taunting gift. Isyllt wanted to fling it against the boards, or into the sea, but it was too lovely a thing to waste in pettiness.

  “You don’t have to come with me,” she said, soft beneath the slow lapping of the tide and the sailors’ shouts.

  Moth snorted contempt for the idea, but her eyes lingered wistfully on the skyline. It was Adam’s silence, however, that weighed on her. When it stretched too long Isyllt broke and turned to face him. Green eyes narrowed as he studied her in turn. Moth glanced at each of them and edged quietly away to talk to a young sailor.

  The sea breathed over them, cool and damp and bitter with brine. Adam’s face was lost in shadow, save for the glint of his night-shining eyes. She read the tension in his shoulders, in the tightness of his hand on his sword-hilt.

  “Will you come?” she asked at last, swallowing her pride. “I can pay you for a month of your time, longer if Asheris pays me.”

  “I’ve wondered,” he said, the words coming slowly, “how the last three years might have been different if I hadn’t gone with you to Symir.”

  Her jaw tightened, the name he didn’t speak leaving a bitter residue on her tongue. Xinai Lin. His partner and lover, who’d sailed with them to Symir and abandoned him there to rejoin her rebel family. Adam had left her behind at the end, choosing Isyllt and the mission over a chance at reconciliation.

  “I know I’m not the safest person to be around…” She tried to make it a joke, but it was all too true.

  Adam chuckled. “Stormcrow. At least I’m not likely to be bored.”

  Hope sparked. She drew in a deep breath and let it out. “There’s another thing. Something I haven’t told you.”

  “Only one thing?”

  “I didn’t just leave the Crown’s service.” She hadn’t explained this to anyone. The words were slow to come. “I broke my oath of service. My magic was bound to that oath—my power broke too. It’s better than it was, but sometimes I have…relapses.”

  He frowned. “When were you going to mention this? Before or after we were killed?”

  She forced her arms by her sides when they wanted to wrap across her chest. She deserved the acid in his voice. “I thought you should know, just in case.”

  “Any other secrets you want to share?”

  “None that might get you killed. I think.”

  He turned his head, jaw working like he meant to spit. “Spies,” he muttered instead, the word a curse.

  She couldn’t argue with that.

  “Lady Iskaldur.” She turned to see Siddir gesture toward the gangplank. “We’re ready.” Moth had already shouldered her bags, shifting her weight impatiently. The night was nearly spent, the eastern sky glowing with false dawn.

  Adam sighed and hefted his own meager pack. “We can both try not to get each other killed.”

  Isyllt felt every hour of the short summer night as she stowed her luggage, but the cabin’s narrow cot offered no comfort. Instead she returned to the deck, leaning against the starboard railing to watch the orange lights of Kehribar dim behind them. The eastern sky pearled with the coming dawn, and the mountains in the north faded from indigo to a whisper of grey.

  She didn’t hear footsteps over the creak of ropes and canvas and rush of waves against the hull, but she felt the break in the wind as someone drew near, smelled amber and olibanum and bitter oranges through the ocean’s tang. Her shoulders tightened—even months after she’d tracked and killed the sorceress Phaedra Severos, certain scents brought back the weight of memory. She still couldn’t drink cinnamon tea. The wind changed, and all that remained was the bouquet of brine and decay.

  She forced herself to relax as Siddir leaned against the rail beside her. “What happened to your leg?” She’d thought it an affectation at first, but though he’d abandoned his cane he still favored his left leg.

  He grimaced. “Blown cover and a bad aim. The bullet was meant for my skull.”

  “How long have you been looking for me?” she asked, sifting through the rest of her questions.

  “My ship sailed from Sherazad fifteen days ago. We knew you left Thesme heading east. Kehribar was a lucky guess.”

  Or a thorough web of contacts. Isyllt knew which one she’d put money on.

  “Asheris might have sent a letter instead of a pressgang. I would have come if he’d asked.” She wasn’t sure that was true, but it sounded pleasantly indignant.

  “I’m sorry.” If she hadn’t known better, she might have thought him truly contrite. “He felt the situation was too important to trust to the vagaries of the post.” He slitted his eyes against the wind. More grey threaded his hair than four years should account for. She didn’t think he was more than a handful of years older than she, forty at most, but their work could age a person. After the assassin and Sahin and a sleepless night, she felt twice thirty.

  “What is the situation?”

  He waved a hand. “Oh, the usual—trouble on the borders, unrest in the senate, pressures from the church.”

  “You don’t need me for any of those.”

  “No. There are…thaumaturgical problems also. I would prefer to let Asheris explain.”

  She watched grey water foam against the hull. “How is he?” She had neglected their correspondence since Kiril’s death.

  From the corner of her eye she saw Siddir smile. “Well.” He dipped on shoulder in a shrug. “Or as well as he can be, I suppose. He makes the best of his situation.”

  Isyllt turned to study him, leaning her hip on the rail. He nodded in answer to her unspoken question. “I know. He told me.”

  She cocked an eyebrow. Asheris’s secret, that he was a jinni bound in human flesh—a demon, as such meldings were commonly called—was a dangerous one. She had learned it by chance in Symir, and nearly died for it. “Who else knows?”

  “Only the empress.”

  The old emperor and his mages had been responsible for the binding. Their deaths had been one of the first things Asheris had done with his freedom. She’d been surprised to hear that he’d gone to work for the new empress, but only for a moment. As Sahin had said, leaving their line of work wasn’t easy, no matter what one’s intentions.

  “Thank you,” Siddir said. “For freeing him. He isn’t the man he was, but I have a friend back all the same. For that I am in your debt.” He fell silent for a time, picking at the varnished rail with one fingernail. “I was very sorry to hear about Lord Orfion.”

  The words were nearly lost beneath the sound of the sea; she wished they had been. She nodded, the most gracious acceptance she could manage. Siddir turned away, leaving her alone with the salt and rising dawn.

  CHAPTER 7

  Across the wine-dark stretch of the Caelurean Sea, the sun rose on Assar. Over the peaks of the Teeth of Heaven, across the flooded stretch of the River Nilufer, and finally to the domes of Ta’ashlan. As the first rays gilded the temple spires, bells and voices rose to greet the rising light. Paeans to the Unconquered Sun, gratitude for another day. Rich and golden as temple honey, but Asheris took no comfort in the sound. Every note and chime was a reminder that this was not and could never be his home.

  Prayers sang out in the palace as well, and servants hurried to their chores, but in the royal apartments shadows and quiet still held sway. The royal family might sleep till noon undisturbed, if they wished. Asheris didn’t think the empress had slept at all.

  The curtains were still drawn in Samar’s private breakfast room, though light and song slivered through them. A brass lamp burned in one corner, casting filigreed shadows across the walls.

  “I appreciate your adherence to the letter of my command,” Samar said dryly, not glancing up as she poured coffee, “but sending my best agent to retrieve a foreign spy hardly follows the spirit. A spy who helped turn Symir into smoking ash.
”

  “That wasn’t precisely her fault. Besides, we could use a necromancer on staff.”

  “It would keep the court on their toes.” She looked up, hazel-gold eyes narrowing. Bruised and tired without the armor of cosmetics; her sleep had been troubled long before the ghost wind blew. “But when I say I need your attention on more immediate matters”—a manicured nail tapped sharply on the parchments stacked on the breakfast table—“I mean it.”

  “The storm may not return for decades,” Asheris said. He sat cross-legged on the far side of the low table, but had not yet touched the food. He wasn’t sure just how angry Samar was. “But return it will, I’m certain. And if it is a problem we can solve, wouldn’t you rather have one less trouble waiting for you? One less waiting for your heirs?”

  He regretted the words as soon as he spoke, and prepared to have a cup thrown at him. Her only reaction was the thinning of her lips. Then her shoulders sagged, and she cast a rare unguarded glance over her shoulder, toward the wall that separated her suite from her niece’s. The room was dim, but inhuman eyes saw well in the dark, saw all the doubts and fears she could never bring before the sun.

  Samar had been married once. No one at court spoke of it, but all knew the story. When her elder brother Rahal gained the throne, he’d been jealous and insecure in his power. Their eldest brother had already died under questionable circumstances, and no doubt Rahal feared the same fate awaited him.

  The accident that befell Samar and her family was equally questionable, though no one could prove the emperor’s involvement. It was also unsuccessful, sparing Samar and claiming instead her husband and young daughter.

  When Rahal died and Samar took the throne, the senate agreed she should be empress in truth and not merely regent to her brother’s daughter. But the Princess Indihar was still her best choice for an heir. The discomfort of the situation wasn’t lost on empress or princess, or anyone else in the court. With the birth of Samar’s child, Indihar stood to lose her inheritance again.